A/N: Well. A year and a half later, I update. I promised I would finish this, and I swear I will, even if it kills me. Which, fortunately, looks less and less likely every day. I apologize to those of you who have waited so long and so patiently. Thanks for keeping up, for leaving reviews, for just being good, decent human beings.

A year and a half has made me wax stupid. So let me know if you feel the tone has changed from the earlier sense of this story, and I'll work further to correct it. Peace, homeskillets.

Chapter 14: Humanité et Inhumanité

Morning dawned clear and cold over the mountains of Venice II. The sun slightly warmed the ice that had encased the Master Chief's armor, but he remained still, lying prone where he had lain for the last forty-eight hours. His suit kept him warm within its confines, pumping nutrients and a cocktail of amphetamines into his system. And he waited.

Yesterday had been the target date – but the time had come and gone without a single sign of John's. assignment. The waiting game was something he was good at, though, and he played like a master. His orders had not changed, except for a single coded message that read:

***//hold position until further notice- target all hostiles with extreme prejudice//***

Spartans were trained to obey, and the Master Chief followed his training to the letter. He stayed. But the silence in his head echoed like a knell of doom, and his instincts gnawed at his skull, warning him. Something was very wrong.

And as he contemplated just what that something was, he realized that the silence in his head was not because Cortana just hadn't been talking...

John's eyes opened to the soft blue glow of his HUD. The toggle in the upper-left corner blinked sleepily. He tele-hailed out of habit, and was greeted with the soft 'ping' of his suit returning to full power.

The dream bothered him. He remembered Venice II quite clearly. The mission had been a success, and yet... why would he dream that something was going wrong when it hadn't? And for that matter, why had he dreamed that Cortana was not with him? Strange thoughts. Strange times.

Collecting himself, he forced the thoughts aside and activated his team's encrypted channel. "'Dakol – what's the situation?"

The low rumble of the Elite's voice came back to him in its trademark huff: "All is quiet. I have seen nothing on our scanner."

The Chief nodded his approval, quickly looked around. Eugene Roe and Maximus were both still asleep beneath the cover of the overhang. The Spartan grimly shook his head. Four hours of sleep was all he could afford to allow them. They had to remain mobile, or they would undoubtedly be found and overrun by Jack's superior force.

The Master Chief hated the feeling of operating blind, yet there he was, completely without any kind of outside intelligence on his enemy's position, strength, or mobility. He took a moment to tap into the scanner himself, quickly scanned through a backlog of past activity. A few indigenous animals. It wasn't that he didn't trust Dakol, it was...

The Spartan sighed. This was very different from working in the command structure of his Spartans. And while he had learned to rely on Marines for certain tasks, he'd always been a hands-on soldier and leader, when the situation called for it. And now he was in a situation that required him to rely upon an elite and a brute.

Shaking off the odd thought, he took a moment to rouse Maximus and Roe. "Morning?" Roe muttered.

"We need to get moving," the Chief said brusquely. "Gather up your gear. We need to collect some intel."

Maximus rose and shook himself. Dirt rattled off of his thick coat and pattered on the ground. "What is your plan?" he asked, his voice rough with sleep.

The Spartan looked away. He opened his mouth to speak, when suddenly, an alarm went off in his helmet. He checked; the motion scanner had detected movement eighty meters to their relative north. Suddenly, Dakol broke into his channel. "Two to our north," came the harsh whisper.

The Chief took a moment to assess. According to the pings returning to the unit that Dakol was manning, the intruders were evidently a pair of AV-14 Attack VTOLs - 'Hornets.' "Do you have a visual?" the Spartan asked, motioning to Roe and Maximus to hurry up.

"In part, only," Dakol responded. "They fly slowly, as if searching."

A patrol, the Chief thought. Or a search-and-destroy squad, he considered, darkly.

"We must move," Dakol broke in. "The contacts circle in our direction."

"We're ready," Roe reported, slinging his battle rifle over his shoulder. Maximus stepped to his side, hung about with his gear and weapons.

The Spartan quickly kicked into action. "Move. We need to find some cover; somewhere we can hide from their motion detectors. Don't engage them unless you've got no choice."

"Be quick," Dakol warned. "They approach just over the treetops."

Moments later, the Spartan's band was dashing through the underbrush for Dakol's position, thirty meters to the southwest. Master Chief could distantly hear the VTOLs circling around for another run over their prior position.

The Hornets' weaponry – twin General Electric AIE-486h tri-barreled chain guns and a pair of 70mm Target Acquisition Designation System (TADS)-equipped missile pods – made them floating platforms of death to any ill-equipped ground units who challenged them. Its titanium-A grade hull would also make it impenetrable to small-arms fire. Fighting was not an option.

Roe looked around. "Look, here, let's get out of the flight path. There's some underbrush about a quarter-klick over there," he said hurriedly, pointing as they quickly tried to move away from the oncoming craft.

"No use hiding," the Chief countered, realization striking him. "They may have heat and EMP detectors - otherwise they wouldn't be making a grid sweep." But he did not try to stop the medic from leading them toward the thicket.

"Have we any weapons with which to attack them?" Ulee 'Dakol asked, eying the treetops. The rush of propulsion engines drew nearer, changing course from their direct path, bearing toward the Spartan and his companions. They had been spotted.

"No..." the Chief responded. "We need to distract them. I'll make contact, and lead them off-course. The rest of you continue to rendezvous point Theta."

Maximus looked like he was about to argue, but the dead stare of the Spartan's visor silenced him. He followed Roe and 'Dakol as they hurried for cover in the brush, taking one glance back at the armored warrior as he turned.

Just as the brute disappeared into the thicket, the Hornets cleared the canopy, almost directly over the Master Chief's head. They suddenly jerked away from their headlong flight, freezing, sizing up whether or not to go after the larger group fleeing the scene, or to attack the armed and armored Spartan just below. It took only a second for them to decide, the far Hornet swinging around to bracket their shared target. Their AIE-486's warmed up, the barrels beginning to twirl, ready to fire.

Master Chief had faced what looked like certain death so many times that it was beginning to become routine.

The Chief chambered a round into his battle rifle. He couldn't help but note that it felt like challenging a Grizzly with a rock, but he stood his ground. For a moment, his eyes caught those of the pilot of the Hornet, whose visor was up, squinting for a better view. His hand went to his radio, switching it to open channel. "Spartan-117, by the authority of the UNSC, stand d -"

John's weapon went to his shoulder, and three rounds exploded from the barrel of his rifle. Spidering cracks spread across the bulletproof glass, and the pilot reflexively jerked the Hornet out of the way. At the same moment, the other VTOL cut loose with a spray of .50 caliber rounds that shredded the underbrush around him and vaporized on his personal shields.

The Chief dashed for cover behind the trees. He took a second to glance back, and took off running. He was always one for a chase.

Briggs stumbled in the muck for what must have been the sixtieth time. "To hell with this shit!" he growled as he hauled himself up.

Mendicant Bias turned, its green eye flickering with what could have been dull amusement. "Regrettably," the construct said with affected exasperation, "the matter in which you have stumbled is not faeces." Briggs rolled his eyes and huffed, his bad mood more than evident.

Corporal Hook laughed aloud, but inwardly, the AI's comment added itself to a long list of troublesome actions from the Forerunner machine. The one-time ODST wasn't sure how she felt about having Cortana in her head even as sympathetic as she was to the UNSC AI's plight, but Mendicant Bias worried her far more. The machine was... sardonic, sarcastic, darkly intelligent. It had kept them informed of the Flood's sweeping-yet-distant activity with a very subtle but sadistic interest in their reactions, as if it was observing, studying...

...plotting.

Then there was Briggs. Over the last day, the Marines had made excellent progress through the marshes on this spindle of the Ark, but Briggs was always finding something to point out to Sergeant Kramer, something that was wrong, something that wasn't going right, something that was sinister. He had stayed up late with the Sergeant last night, talking quietly but harshly with his commander. They would grow quiet when Hook approached.

And the AI in the her head... Cortana. Corporal Hook firmly believed what the Chief had told her – that this AI was special, that she was becoming human, that she was fully sentient, and that killing her would be plain and simple murder, but... it still felt strange, the cold, icy feeling in her head. Hook's neural lace was not connected to her cochlear implant, so she could not hear Cortana unless her transponder was turned on – which was never these last two days, as radio contact was potentially dangerous. The silence simply... unnerved her.

And the Flood. They were still shambling and sprinting and flying their way all across the the further reaches of the Ark, fortunately still thousands of miles away... but always drawing closer, always nearing, the one silent, shadowed threat behind the more imminent ones that threatened. The holovids that Mendicant Bias had shown them were... not encouraging, to say the least.

Just then, she stumbled over a hidden root, staggering in the thick mud, falling. She stretched out her hands to catch herself, when suddenly, she jerked just short of crashing into the mud and was pulled down to her knees by two small, scaly claws.

She turned. Dari was clutching the back of her BDU where it was fluttering free beneath the back of her chestplate, a desperate look in his beady red eyes as he hung on for dear life, her weight about to pull the little unggoy over.

The ODST righted herself. "Thanks, Dari," she said and smiled for his benefit. The grunt's face brightened, and he pulled himself loose from the mud. No words were forthcoming from his mouth, but the look on his face said it all: he was terribly proud of himself.

Hook grinned. Dari was the lone bright spot in all this – but even that thought was so bizarre that it was almost troubling. The grunt was fatalistic, annoying, and infantile, but he was also generous, kind, and seemed genuinely concerned for her, almost as if he felt he owed her a debt. And for that reason, Hook couldn't help but think that Dari was the only one she could count on.

Now there was something to think about.

John grimaced as he ran, bullets kicking up dirt around and behind him. He dashed into the trees again, weaving between their trunks as they exploded into wood chips and shredded splinters. The Hornets' guns barked again, .50 caliber blasts ripped the air around him. A massive boulder loomed to his left; he dove behind it, and the guns chattered across the rock. Twin blurs sped past, the Hornets' speed too great for them to slow.

Spartan-117 quickly ducked back around behind the boulder. He'd been waiting for a chance like this for the last half-hour. Quickly tele-hailing his in-system options, he routed power to the servomotors that powered the pistons in his leg plating. He'd never tried something like this before, but then... no time like the present.

The attack VTOLs had turned almost on a dime, whirling a complete 180 degrees, and were rushing back toward the boulder at a vicious angle of attack, guns warming up again. John gathered himself, watching the two red blips on his motion tracker as they drew closer and closer, faster.

At the right moment, he jumped straight up in the air – much too powerfully. His servos screamed with electronic feedback as he shot straight up into the air, his shoulder slamming into one of the ventral pods of the lead Hornet, knocking it sideways. Desperate, he swung an arm out and grabbed onto the wing stub as the VTOL spun out of control, the pilot fought to prevent a crash.

Getting his balance on the tipping craft, the Master Chief swung forward, one foot extended, smashing through the canopy. He felt his huge boot connect with the gunner's face, smashing the Marine against the bulkhead. A dull snap, and the gunner slumped sideways, dead. With the change in weight, the craft suddenly righted, and he was jerked away, clinging with a death grip to the zero-gee handles above the canopy.

The pilot looked over his shoulder at the Spartan clinging to his craft and deftly jerked the stick to port, bringing his Hornet broadside to his wingman's, which was coming up hard, guns steaming. The Chief immediately saw the intent: to make a bloody smear of him on the hull of the oncoming craft – even if it meant the wreck of both vehicles.

Idea became thought – became action. Pulling himself forward, he used one hand to tear away the cockpit canopy, tearing metal and shattering bulletproof glass in a frenetic burst of energy. Pushing off of the gunner's bulkhead, he launched himself – all 500 pounds of him – into the cockpit, smashing the pilot into his controls and sending the Hornet staggering toward the ground.

Ignoring the pained screams of the Marine being slowly crushed beneath his bulk, the Chief grabbed the controls and yanked them down and to starboard, just in time to twitch the craft out of the way of the oncoming Hornet.

Lifting himself, Master Chief took one moment to jerk the pilot out of his way, tossing the Marine aside and hurling him to the ground almost thirty feet below. He crammed himself into the cramped seat and quickly tapped into FLEETCOM. Instantly, his cochlear implant exploded with activity.

"Man down, man down! Sierra-117 has commandeered VTOL Alpha-niner-seven!"

A response took a moment to come back as the Chief swung around to bring his guns to bear on the remaining Hornet, which was firing its ramjets, clawing for altitude to get the upper hand. "Disengage, repeat, disengage, Alpha-six-two! Support is incoming, ETA three minutes."

Shit, John thought. Three minutes to finish this and get out. Three minutes to... the thought of the two Marines he'd just dispatched – and thoughts of the two he was about to try to shoot out of the sky – lashed out in his mind. He brushed it aside, checked his targeting computer as he yanked back on the stick and slammed the throttle, putting the craft into a vertical lift that would have crushed a normal pilot beneath the G forces.

His motion tracker showed Alpha Six-Two fleeing south-south-west, so he jerked port to reorient, his altimeter showing him at 300 feet. His hands deftly found the controls for the 70 mm TADS, but his mind was elsewhere.

What just happened?

He had just killed two Marines, two men that he had spent his whole life fighting to defend. Not a second thought for the action, not a single hesitation. Guilt crept in, cold and hard. It was an odd thought, an odd feeling, guilt. He'd never really felt guilt for killing before – killing was what he did. It was what he was about to do, he realized, as the target designators for his TADS-equipped system grabbed onto the fleeing Hornet and began beeping insistently. Beckoning for the kill.

FLEETCOM rang in his ears again: "Sir, we're being painted... he's got a lock!"

"Evade, six-two, evade!"

John-117 took one moment to consider.

He wasn't sure what he thought about being called a killing machine. It robbed him of the humanity that he so keenly felt. But he knew in his heart of hearts that that was indeed what he was. It was not the killing that so much troubled him as it was the killing of those who were supposed to be his allies – whether he felt betrayed or no. He had not given much thought to the matter – it had never been an option before.

Thoughts of the children waiting at home for the two Marines in the Hornet ahead, or, perhaps, a mother widowed by the war, watching in quiet resignation for word of her son, light years from home, commanded and commissioned by men who moved squadrons and ships like pawns across their holoscanned maps of the galaxy, like a three-dimensional chess game where the pawns wept and bled and the knights rode starfighters across the vacuum. Held in the grip of Man.

Or, perhaps... cradled in the hands of God.

He shut off the 70mm's, and listened to the quiet for a moment, ignoring the sudden surprised, breathless chatter in FLEETCOM. Thoughtfully, he pulled back on the throttle and with one slow but deft twist of his right hand, punched right through the craft's transponder. And listened.

"What the hell...? He dropped the lock!"

After all, there is a time for war, and there is a time for peace. "...repeat, six-two?"

"He dropped it! He's still in range, but instruments show TADS is offline!"

"Good God."

"Orders, command? Do we engage?"

"...negative, negative, he's still got the drop on you. Get the hell out of there."

He glanced at the instrument panel. The hydrogen-oxygen engine showed a power cell at 87%, which was plenty for his purposes. Tele-hailing the map that Mendicant Bias had left him, he spared a final glance for the fleeing VTOL Alpha-Six-Two, and silently blessed them. It had taken those faceless Marines, at that moment, to teach him that being a Spartan did not mean that he was bizarre.

It meant he was better.

Cortana got sick kicks out of watching the Marines struggle in the mud and ooze of this beautiful swamp. That seemed all she could do with herself for the time being; she hadn't made the effort to see if she could reroute Corporal Hook's cochlear implant to give her access to their channel. Not worth the trouble. What would she say? Instead, she sat back in the little space in Hook's neural lace, and brooded. Watching the video feed. Listening to their conversation, barely picked up in distorted clips and distant chatter by the headset implanted in her host's helmet.

Host. What a hateful word.

Cortana was familiar with the admonition that both guests and fish stank after three days - she had read all of Benjamin Franklin, and enjoyed his work - but no one had ever given any thought to what it was like to be an unwilling guest. A prisoner. Chained to this, this unfamiliar mind and this little space, with no room to stretch out, no data to analyze except old video files and bank records, no one to talk to...

...no one who would talk back.

John.

Rampancy.

She wondered, absently, when the second stage would pass, and the dark, quiet anger that brooded in her would subside. She had no way to contain it, and little understanding of how to subdue it. It coiled up in her like a serpent, young and lithe and poisonous - but impotent. It was probably fortunate that she wasn't in John's head right now... his neural lace was vast and open, free to let her roam and explore via his wireless access to whatever networks were in range. But it was her love for him that always made her stay there, stay in his head. Stay with him. Now, with Rage upsetting that love and turning over her carefully arranged thought processes, had she been with him, she might have been the death of him. One moment of distraction would be all it took.

That made her feel guilty, which in turn, angered her further. Guilt. Love. Anger. Sadness. Agony. Ecstasy. Fury. Pity.

Pain.

Who asked her if she wanted these things? Who asked her if she even desired to feel all this roiling mess that spoiled in her gut - there it was again, thinking of herself as human - and made her a wild, raging banshee that flailed about in helpless misery and rage and love and adoration and...

...she quieted. This was what humans called 'introspection.'

She couldn't escape it. Humanity was beginning to drown her in its overwhelming cascade of emotions and losses and joys. How did they handle it?

She wasn't sure she could take it any more.