"Lost Systems.
They were a side effect of the Cole Protocol. Thirty years of constant warfare, of scorched earth and glassed cities. A thousand colonies burned in the war; a billion citizens lost forever in clouds of seared soot and crackling ash. One by one, communities went dark, taking themselves off the interstellar grid – some by choice, so many others not. Records were deleted, whole ship logs wiped in the UNSC's bitter retreat into the Inner Colonies. One by one, route by route, the galaxy became a smaller place.
But still these wayward colonies endured; lone candles in the great dark.
Many were found again, discovered by deep space patrols, tracing their routes backward from out of date star maps and recovered shipping manifests from the hulled vessels that lay adrift in space. Others finds were less deliberate, as traders blindly stumbled across entire colonies, long since forgotten in the maelstrom of the Human-Covenant War. Oftentimes these reunions made for grim discoveries – whole planets blackened; containing little more than ash-caked skeletons and grim memories.
More seldom were the happy occasions. Forgotten pockets of civilisation – usually small encampments and isolated research facilities, the occasional thriving city-state. Some re-joined the UNSC gladly. Others resisted, preferring elective isolation to the promise of a united government with those who had seemingly abandoned them, reigniting long dormant tensions from a time when humanity naively believed itself to be the sole power within the galaxy. By 2556 the majority of the Lost Systems were rediscovered – standing as either testament to humanity's enduring resolve… or silent tombs at the edge of human space.
The last colony to be marked officially Lost was Granica V, in early 2558. This was, naturally, a clerical error, soon attributed to a temporary power outage of the planet's Waypoint connectivity. A correction was made, the clerical error was expunged, and Granica V was soon struck from the official register.
This was to be expected. For Granica was by all accounts a happy community, free from incident."
Official recollections of the post-war period, 2552-2558 [Published by the Office of Naval Intelligence, 2561
"Remind me again why we're here, Dr. Pearson?"
"Sight-seeing Chidi. We're expanding our cultural horizons."
"Right."
"You don't sound convinced."
"Probably because I'm not convinced, Doctor."
Rebecca looked up at her companion, wondering how best to change tack. The Spartan accompanying her was dressed in (modified) civilian clothing; a long winter coat, with a white hoodie that contrasted brilliantly with her ebony skin. Long coats and hoodies, those were all the rage with the locals these days. Not that it helped. Even disguised Chidinma stood out like a flamingo in a flock of ducks. Where Rebecca was petite and presentable, Chidinma was tall, unnaturally so, and straight backed. Her shoulders were set with a bearing only a lifetime of military service could instil, and yet she moved with a flowing, delicate grace.
Height and musculature alone weren't what set her apart. It was the contrast of feminine beauty and sculptural strength. Her head was shorn of any hair, and her prominent cheekbones and upturned chin carried a refined elegance. She would break you in half, and look positively regal as she did so.
Less regal was her obvious boredom with their immediate surroundings.
They stood in the cavernous atrium of the Argjend War Museum; a landmark tourist attraction in happier times, now an impressive but sadly forgotten relic of the Great War. Lean economic times had taken their toll on the visitor numbers, but – this early on a Tuesday – it felt as though they were the only ones in the entire building.
Only they weren't. The six men shadowing them gave them a wide berth, but their presence was constant. So too was the faint radio chatter squawking from their ear-pieces, and the heavy swagger of their movements; the kind of exaggerated strut that only men wearing concealed body armour could effect. The UNSC had let one of its Spartans out of captivity for the day, but even then the leash permitted was a short one.
Rebecca ignored them. She had clearance to bring Chidinma out for the day, and that's precisely what she intended on doing. For months Rebecca had clamoured to let the suspended Spartans interact with the wider city, to get a sense of what civilian life was like. To show them what they were protecting. Chidinma was having a hard time adjusting to life after Fireteam Chimera's deactivation. Chimera Three's file was pending formal assessment and evaluation – an assessment that Rebecca herself was responsible for. Until then, Chidinma was effectively in limbo, pending clearance.
"Let's take a walk, Chidi."
Their footfalls echoed against the high stone walls.
There was another the reason why the building felt empty. The building had been cleared in advance of their arrival. Chidinma might be allowed to travel in public areas, but that didn't necessarily mean the public were allowed to be there at the same time. This isolation only heightened the sound of their footsteps as the two women strolled deeper into the museum.
And what a fine museum it was. The atrium fed back into a long chamber – sparsely lit but for the illumination of the individual displays. Suspended from the rafters and dominating the vaulted roof of the long chamber was the landing craft from the UNSC Mauritius; the settlement craft that had originally discovered Granica V a century prior. The lander was a battered, tired old thing; the paint had long since peeled away; exposing the chrome hull beneath. The vessel itself was a Shoebill 85-E; the same type of ship Chidinma had flown in her abortive escape from Cairo III so many years before. The sight of the ship snapped Chidi out of her ennui. Her eyes never left the landing craft as they passed beneath it.
"It's been well preserved, given how old it is." Rebecca observed.
"Heavy ships to fly. Heavier than a Pelican. Tend to favour one side, to list depending on the throttle and fuel distribution." Chidinma's eyes were analysing the ship, taking in its every detail. This had been the closest she had been to a ship in months. "They recalled the Shoebill for precisely that reason."
"It's been a while since you've flown a ship like that?"
That got a smile out of Chidi; brilliant white teeth, seldom seen.
"You could say that. I was six, or seven - I can't remember. It was a short flight. Clipped a billboard, found ourselves canopy deep in sand."
As they strolled deeper into the museum, the history of the colony gave way to more contemporary attractions; The Great War in particular.
A timeline of the Human-Covenant War glowed to life on a series of wall-mounted plinths as they passed, charting the conflict from the initial contact at Harvest through to the final victory in 2552. Rebecca had escaped the worst of it, sheltered amongst the Inner Colonies. So many others had not been so fortunate.
Next, there came size comparison studies of each of the major Covenant races; full-scale animatronics that growled and tilted their heads menacingly as the tourists passed. Motion sensors, probably, tied to a proximity trigger. That's what her head told her. As she passed a trio of cackling Jackal figures, their energy shields rendered by crude neon discs of moulded plastic, Rebecca's skin crawled. The artists had done their work well – the Jackals' flesh seemed to glisten.
Chidinma for her part eyed them distastefully, but decline to comment. Rebecca noted how the Spartan's hands hand unconsciously balled into fists the moment the mannequins had come within eyeshot. Combat reflex, so deeply ingrained. How quickly the Spartans reverted to a combat footing. Any levity from before was gone now.
"How long are they going to keep following us?" Chidinma asked eventually, nodding toward the agents lurking behind her. She spoke quietly, her chin tucked to her chest. Only her eyes drank in the displays around her. Like a caged predator, looking for an exit, Rebecca thought.
"For as long as it takes for them to decide you're trustworthy." Rebecca said at first, before adding sheepishly, "That we're trustworthy."
Chidinma blinked at that.
"They have you under surveillance too?"
"Can't say they give me quite the same degree of attention, but I'm the official shrink to a team of Spartan pariahs. That makes me persona non grata at best. A borderline accomplice at worst."
It was then that Rebecca's Chatterpad emitted a lilting bleeping warble; the kind the old City AI's used to make. The type of sound nobody on Granica V had heard in months. The two women exchanged a glance and Rebecca quietly pulled the smooth tablet out of her handbag.
There was only one person on the planet who used that particular tone. It was his calling card; the equivalent of a polite knock. He could have jacked her pad, hell, the entire Museum's network, the second he wanted to. Only he never would because, for all his frightful intelligence, he was insufferably polite.
Rebecca keyed the receive button.
"Rashid, you know you're not supposed to be accessing the system network." Rebecca hissed under her breath, careful not to look as though she were speaking into the pad directly. "It's barely functional as it is. They'll string you up if they catch you."
"Relax, I've wired instructions for your guards to hang back and secure all exits. That should give you the run of the floor."
"And you've achieved this how?"
"Oh, you know. This and that. A conflicting order here, a countermanding protocol there. They think it's System Control administering the orders, but what they don't know is that Control hasn't been active since The Surge. Their real orders are still being dished out verbally. I wonder how long before one of them realises their acknowledgements are falling on deaf ears."
"Rashid –"
"It's all perfectly innocent I assure you, Dr. Pearson." Rashid moved swiftly on before she could protest further, "Now, as to the reason for my call."
"Go on." Rebecca sighed.
"The Museum you're in. Fascinating place. Early settlement period, almost ninety years old. There's a strange energy reading coming from the display at the far end of the hall. Caught it on one of the routine orbital scans thrown out by the Carpathia three days ago. Would you be so kind as to take a look for me?"
Rebecca and Chidinma exchanged a look. Chidinma just shrugged. True to Rashid's word, their escort had slinked away, retreating the exits on the far end of the hall, hands pressed to their ear-pieces. They were enclosed here: there was nowhere to go beyond the full height glass wall overlooking the freeway beyond, and that was a full thirty foot drop into heavy traffic.
"Fine." Rebecca sighed, "But if they catch you snooping around in the network like this then I don't know you, I've never had you as a patient, and I sure as hell aren't going to be signing any approval papers within the next decade."
"You wound me, Dr. Pearson: I am the very model of caution."
The end of the hall terminated in a grand flight of steps leading up to the War Display's central attraction. Chidinma's sheer height allowed her to take the steps three at a time. Rebecca, for her part, was wheezing by the time she caught up.
Mounted on the dais before them was a first-hand relic of The Great War. The Jiralhanae Assault Bike – designated a Type 25 Rapid Assault Vehicle in the less imaginative prose of the UNSC Infantry Field Manual – was a huge, muscular beast of a machine. Dressed in chrome and flecked with scars; it seemed an ancient, terrible bludgeon of a vehicle; as brutish as those who once drove it. A laughably small velvet roped cordoned the bike away from the edge of the display dais, as though it would somehow stop the fearsome machine from breaking free from its civilised surroundings and rampaging free.
"Impressive machine." Chidinma grunted.
"More than impressive," Rashid's voice piped up. "I think it's the source of our mysterious power reading. Would you mind taking a look?"
Chidinma stepped up to the edge of the display section, marvelling at the war machine. Even at her height, the machine dwarfed her. There was a faint hum. Chidinma didn't need a VISR suite to see that the bike was cordoned off by a web of infrared beams. She could hear the faint humming, a sound entirely lost on Rebecca. The velvet rope was a gentle visual reminder to all non-augmented civilians to kindly keep their hands off the alien war machine. The beams did the actual legwork.
"A moment, if you can Chidi." Rashid had toggled the speaker settings on the ChatterPad remotely, "Disabling security systems… now."
The subsonic humming ceased.
Chidinma stepped up onto the Dais, stepping over the waist high rope (at least on Rebecca) as one would navigate over a small but affectionately obstructive dog. She circled the bike, ignoring the small anxiety attack Rebecca was currently experiencing from the side-lines.
Chidinma came to a stop by the bike's controls. She pressed her palm against the hull.
"It's still warm." she said quietly.
Rebecca for her part hovered back.
"Move closer." Rashid urged, "I can't see from this far back."
Rebecca hissed and almost tripped over the velvet rope, her foot catching it as she stepped up onto the dais. Only a determined hop saved her from an unceremonious face plant onto the timber decking.
When she did join Chidinma, she wordlessly held the pad up for Rashid to see. It was better to mollify the curious Spartan. Either that or he'd go and hack something even more incriminating.
"Better." Rashid's voice sounded tinny from the tiny speaker. "Can't say a 'pad is ideal for this kind of work, but I'll take what I can get. Give me a -"
"Hey!" a voice bellowed out. One of their handlers was fast approaching; one hand on his mic, the other close to his belt. "You're not supposed to be over there!"
The rest of their escort was closing in on them.
Chidinma and Rebecca stepped back down off the dais, looking suitably bashful.
As they were escorted back out into the waiting ground car, Rebecca took a moment to type a furious message into the seemingly inert Chatternet window.
\\What were you playing at Rash?
For a moment there was a pause.
Then Rashid's reply appeared.
\\Secrets. Mysteries. Contingencies.
Rashid set his pad down on the sheets with a frustrated sigh. Another mystery that would have to wait for another day. He had been so close.
Rashid was bored. This was a dangerous thing. Disaster usually followed.
He sat in the hospital bed, listening to call and return beep-sigh of the machines around him. He looked down at his leg. Marvelled at the half of it that was no longer there.
Six months had passed. Since long months of test after test, procedure after invasive procedure. He'd died twice since they pulled him from the dust-choked ruins of New Cadiz. Chidinma had stood vigil over him for three straight days, unwilling to move even as the doctors pushed past to cut the armour from him with an industrial plasma cutter. They had worked around her, reticent to anger his silent guardian.
The combined medical expertise of the entire planet's most talented doctors had been thrown at him. And still he lay here; a broken shell of what he had once been.
The leg was not the full extent of his injuries. The Mantis he and the Rangers had been dashing for had been surrounded by multiple shooters, firing down from an elevated firing position. Hard rounds had chopped down at him as he lay helpless in the scorched sand. Many struck home. He'd never felt the impacts (concussive shock would do that to you, augmented or not) but the shield system – beleaguered, battered; bleating in anguished panic – collapsed. They pulled six bullets from his flesh as the surgeons worked long into the night, fighting to save a man that should have by rights been unkillable.
One round in particular had entered Rashid's left forearm and lodged itself at the rear of his elbow, coming to a rest against the inner skin of the Mjolnir sleeve; neatly severing the ulnar nerve. He waggled his fingers. Rashid had regained motor function, but there was no sensation beyond a clamming tingly in his palm, ring and little finger; pins and needles, a dullened sensation, as though he were wearing an oven mitt made of his own skin. A small set-back, but even now it stymied him: Rashid would hammer the keys on the haptic displays of his holoboard, content that his keystrokes were falling as his brain told them to, only to find he had converted entire swathes of his nuanced input into outraged capitals, ruining the delicate string of coding he had so neatly hoped to thread. The frustration was maddening.
Because he should have healed by now. By rights the doctors should have pieced him back together long ago; a fresh limb in place of the old one; flash-cloned and gene-melded to fit, good as new. Rashid was a Spartan, the pinnacle of genetic material in the mid 26th century. If anything his recovery should have been accelerated. Tissues should have bonded, new nerve endings should sprung to life where they had been so brutally severed.
But instead, complications; low murmurings and shaking heads. Genetic abnormalities, they said. Something in the DNA Code, the genetic sequencing. It was unique, defying medical explanation. Rashid asked for the resources to investigate it himself. Let him solve the puzzle so many others could not. Yet his own medical history was tightly sealed. Even he couldn't access it.
There had been talk of prosthetics. A holding action, until such time that more informed (read: security rated) medical teams could obtain access to Rashid's medical history. The only problem was that the best roboticists on Argjend had lost most of their equipment in the Data-Surge of '57, and were only now in the process of measuring him up for the necessary mechanical augmentations.
As Rashid lay there, stranded on the top floor of the Havenwood Long Term Recovery Unit, the world had not waited for him to recover. Instead, it had wasted little time in picking the rest of Fireteam Chimera apart.
He had been too injured to attend the tribunals for any great duration. They had wheeled him in, of course, once or twice. Just enough to damn his comrades. Made him sit in the chair: a sad, sorry spectacle; a puppet whose strings were pulled by those solely looking to pummel his fellow Spartans as a matter of public record.
Not that those on the commission had needed much in the way of material. The list of transgressions was substantial. Gross insubordination, blatant disregard for chain of command, even conspiracy with an identified rogue operative. They shot men for less.
With Eric AWOL, command had needed an avatar to blame for the disaster in New Cadiz. An entire city lost to terrorist action. A calamity, unprecedented in the post-war period. As the two surviving Spartans from the city's collapse, blame had fallen squarely on Damien and Viktorya. As the ranking Spartan on mission, Damien was sent into effective exile, utterly disgraced. A non-combat detail, Chidinma had told Rashid later; somewhere in one of the more remote regions on the planet. He would never see active duty again.
As for Vee, well, in the tribunal's view she had been the instigator. God only knew under what rock they'd swept her.
That left less than half of Chimera left: one, a battered cripple, the other a lost soul adrift in a society that was still picking up the pieces of Kaizen's rampage.
And Luke. Rashid had watched the mission logs. Watched his bio-coms flat-line the instant the tether had fallen, bringing down the entire city with it. Not even Mjolnir would have held.
Rashid pushed the memories aside, busying himself with his latest distraction.
It was Delveware. Unsynched, naturally; but then you needed a working Waypoint connection to get the full synchronisation, and there was no chance of that happening anytime within the next six months. Still, it was enough to paddle the local nets – and, when the occasion called for it – dive deeper.
The Surge of '57. Rashid still snorted when he heard it. "Data-Surge my left foot," he had grinned when he first heard it, enjoying the discomfort of just about every medical technician within ear-shot. The official line had been something akin to a rogue virus, the work of terrorist insurgents. Those in the know called bullshit. Just about every hacker worth their salt knew that only a UNSC A.I. could effect a system collapse on that scale. What they didn't know was the motive behind it.
Discovering the answer to that particular had become Rashid's newest hobby.
Kaizen was gone. In lock-down or destroyed entirely, Rashid wasn't sure. What he was sure of, however was that getting the answers he sought was going to take a greater degree of skill than would be traditionally required. With the entire planetary network having undergone a system crash with all the endearing subtlety of an MAC Round to the temple, Granica V's networks lay in an isolated, fragile state; the equivalent of a safe mode. This standby state allowed the city to slowly, tentatively function once more as an interfacing entity. By contemporary standards it was all laughably basic; a crude, achingly slow shadow of its former self.
The Spartan Way. A change in situation demanded a change in approach. You couldn't take the shortcuts one normally would with the wider Waypoint networks. No wireless hot-beaming, no ChatterNet signal-splicing or IP cloning. You had to navigate the specific currents and eddies of the standby networks – course along their pathways and choose the right moment to slip from one estuary to the next major data stream. A digital throwback to the far cruder days of the 21st century.
Rashid's program allowed him to do just that. There had been restrictions on how much hardware he had been permitted to handle at first. The menagerie of gifts he'd received from various well-wishers had been scattershot as they were well intentioned; a miniature Mantis robot from the mech jockeys from Stride Team Goliath, a basic entertainment holo-lens from Chidinma, and an archaic e-reader from Rebecca. All had all been disassembled for parts. He had slapped together the various components onto his government issue data-pad, tinkering and toying with the contraption until it resembled a fat tablet of a computer; as spiky and bulky as it was powerful.
Nothing was wasted, however. Every alteration served a purpose, even if the precise purpose for the modification was entirely lost on those who questioned it. These upgrades would become apparent in time. It was six weeks before he was well enough to make the alterations, and a further six before his guards became complacent enough to leave him alone in his room in the ward.
Then there was the matter of bandwidth. His handlers (and Rashid was under no illusions that they were anything less than handlers) had been quick to limit him to a basic data package. Physical connection, carefully monitored. Select government approved channels only. Rashid had been forced to write the wireless code late at night, when they weren't overtly snooping on him.
Within a two hours, he had slipped their digital bonds. Within four hours the entire data stream feeding into the hospital had been repurposed for his own ends (Rashid had taken the liberty of improving several efficiencies within the hospital's otherwise excellent procedures, but declined to make these contributions public). By the following night, Rashid had one of the strongest connections within the city.
Still, he delved carefully. Chidinma and Rebecca became his eyes and ears within the city, bringing him places he could never go. Where they went, he followed; tapping into Chidinma's helmet cam whilst she was on exercises (and cursing his wounds for denying him his freedom), or monitoring the cameras around Rebecca, exploring the city with her as she adjusted to her new life on the planet; just an innocuous red light on mid-range Chatterpad.
When his friends were indisposed, Rashid turned to his other favourite hobby: intelligence gathering. Granica V was a political bonfire waiting to go up in flames. If the tinderbox was lit, knowing anything and everything about the city might mean the difference between life and death.
And so Rashid dedicated his sleepless nights to the mysteries of Granica V. There were more than a few. The museum today had been one of those rare moments when his friends' forays into the city overlapped with the questions that had caught his attention. A Brute Chopper, still active in a Museum. Power source incorrectly shut down, the tech still running, and nobody knew about it. A fascinating display of incompetence. Still, something to log, something to register his memory banks, to recall if ever needed.
The more he delved, the more he learned. Of how the gangs in the refugee zone were growing in size, feeding on the desperation. Of how weapons were being smuggled into the city, slipping through cracks the city's beleaguered police force simply couldn't plug. Of a city inching ever closer to calamity once again.
His fingers froze on the holo-board. A wave of his hand brought him back to the previous page. Another page-shift. He adjusted his goggles, making sure he'd read that last sentence correctly.
A news article. Bungled home invasion, accidental murder. That's what the 'cast said. Only his program was flashing up more than a dozen related links; automated points of enquiry thrown up by in-built subroutines. Murder victim's bank account was minimal. Middle aged software designer, minimal income. Security system for the block had failed. Victim was an identified Delver, name of Seb Grummins; handle of Zulu Voodoo. Mid-level, noted on some of the boards as having some talent at decryption but no rockstar by anyone's metric.
Rashid delved deeper. Another thread, this time on the dark net – "Hackers being silenced – BEWARE THE EYES THAT FOLLOW", it read. Rashid didn't hesitate. His curiosity was well and truly piqued by this point. He joined the thread. dove deep.
The format was old, ancient even. Text only, no visual displays, no embeds or avatars. Just text; ciphers masking the identities of those posting. Damn that's Old School, he grinned.
He read quickly. Skimmed it almost. As one hand pulled the chat log downward, the other ran side searches; verifying leads, exploring lines of further questioning. His heartrate had sped up. Combat-reflex, that old giddy thrill. His muscles unconsciously tensed.
It was probably nothing. Conspiracy theories were dime a dozen on the nets. But this, this was compelling. Hackers disappearing. Auto accidents, street muggings, home invasions. Seven deaths in three months. All noted Delvers, all connected to a single profile – an alias known only as Watchful_Eyes.
Rashid adjusted his goggles, leaning forward in his bed.
Rashid's lips twitched in a smile. For the first time in months, he had something to properly sink his teeth into.
At last, he was no longer bored.