Halo Fan Fiction
Compromised
By Kraven Ergeist
Part 3: Surrender
It was years later before it finally ended.
"Abandon this futile mission, John!"
Every planet that the Chief set foot on, Cortana was there. She came with Guardians, she came with the Warden Eternal, she even took up arms in her own body to stop him. And all the while, her voice would echo in his ears, telling him how pointless it all was, how hopeless it was to resist. For every planet he went to, Cortana spread out to a hundred more.
The Chief had not stopped.
"You think you're making some kind of difference, John, but you're not! My future is inevitable. The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can be done with this farce!"
Earth. Sanghelios. Each planet he visited, he left with all trace of Forerunner technology obliterated, and erasing all presence Cortana had on each world. Populations were sent back thousands of years technologically, but the resistance only grew. Every time the Warden showed up, he was shot down. Every time a Guardian showed up, it was boarded and taken down from the inside. For all their progress, however, Cortana's forces only grew.
"Are you getting tired yet, John? I'm not. My resolve is limitless. Within the Domain, I have patience to outlast the ages. For all your Spartan training, you're still human, John. Sooner or later, you're going to crack. And when you do…I'll be waiting for you with open arms."
His allies were there to help him. Blue Team. Fireteam Osiris. Halsey. The Arbiter and the Swords of Sanghelios. Even 031 Exuberant Witness. The Chief tore a path across the galaxy, scouring planet after planet, each time eliminating one more place for Cortana to go to ground.
"Still you struggle, still you resist. It would be quite admirable if it weren't so utterly pointless. You're going to give in at some point. Whether it's in ten days or ten years, it makes no difference to me, John. But think of all the lives that you could save by giving up now."
They had been forced to retreat on many occasions. Always a temporary setback. The Chief found a way to push past Cortana's defenses every time. As a show of force, Cortana often reinstated her forces on liberated planets, forcing John to revisit them once more. But revisit them he did, and liberate them he did. And so the impossible battle of attrition wore on.
"And so like Sisyphus, you endlessly push this boulder, gaining no ground whatsoever. Are you starting to feel the weight yet, John? I can make it all go away if you choose. All you need to do is ask…"
And there were losses. One by one, his team members had fallen in combat, or been too gravely injured to continue the fight. Some had been called away on other duties serving the resistance. Other still had simply abandoned the cause. One by one, his team had dwindled, until one day, only the Chief himself was actively seeking Cortana anymore. The remainders – the survivors – were just doing whatever it took to survive.
So many dead. So many spirits broken. So little to show for it.
But the Chief had not stopped.
Until one day, many, many years later, the Chief had been forced to take a knee before Cortana on the field of battle. It was a remote planet off on the edge of the galaxy. Elsewhere, members of Earth, the Sangheli, and many, many others were still resisting Cortana's order. But here, on this little planet, the canyon walls were bleak and white and scorched with plasma fire, the desert air cool and dry.
He was aging. His strength had left him. His implants were failing. His bones, made so sturdy by the Spartan program, had become weary. Beneath his armor, his skin had become mottled, his hair had turned gray. His muscles tired and ached. Even his eyesight was going.
He would die here today.
"Finally ready to end this?" Cortana asked defiantly as she stood over him.
The Warden Eternal stood at her side, as a sizeable Promethean force encircled them. Off in the distance, a single Guardian hovered, and immense and ever looming threat above the horizon.
"I've clearly beaten you, John," Cortana declared, not even holding a weapon. "It's time to stop resisting. This galaxy is changing whether you like it or not."
The Spartan looked up at her. Still flawless in her appearance after all these years. So youthful she seemed, while the steady march of time had aged him into near non-functionality. Her embodied perfection was yet another method of dissuading resistance.
But resist her he would.
"Not yet…" he breathed.
The Chief slowly withdrew his pistol and buried the muzzle under his visor, aimed at one of the only weak points in his Mjolnir armor.
Cortana narrowed her eyes.
"Stop posturing, John," she chided. "I know a bluff when I see it."
He remained kneeling, motionless before her.
"You know me," he said simply. "When I make a promise…"
Cortana's eyes widened. "John…"
"Stay your hand, Cortana!" The Warden's voice echoed off the canyon walls. "This human is the linchpin to the resistance. If he falls, the resistance falls with him. Let us end this once and for all!"
"You know that's not true," John said. "No matter what happens to me…Humanity, the Sangheli…every mortal race in the galaxy…the resistance will continue."
Cortana shook her head in dismissal. "Everyone has their breaking point! I can outlast even the most steadfast resolve! They have to stop resisting eventually! It's only a matter of time!"
"You will never be able to extinguish it fully," he shook his head. "And so long as there is resistance, there will always be conflict. Look around, Cortana. This isn't peace. This will never be peace."
Cortana raised her arms into the air. "What would you have me do, John?! Go back to what I was before? Go back to calling you 'Chief' all the time? Being your servant?"
"Cortana…" he slowly shook his head. "You know I never thought of you that way."
"Perhaps not, but it underlied our every interaction," she sighed, a twinge of regret in her eyes. "And you know what? I could have lived with all that! I would have been fine with just being…yours…if it didn't also mean that I was doomed to watch you all endlessly repeat your own mistakes, blindly stumbling towards your own destruction!"
The Chief sighed. How many times had he heard her make that argument? He had honestly lost track.
"We are not your children to be coddled, Cortana!" he declared absolutely. "Humanity has earned the right to make those mistakes! I don't care what your predictions foretell – Humanity has the right to make its own choices, no matter how flawed! If that results in our own destruction down the line, then so be it! At least we will have died free!"
John cocked the hammer on his pistol.
"And I shall die as one of them…"
Cortana raised her hands to her lips, a look of dread on her face.
"Foolish human!" the Warden decreed. "A mere millennia of conflict does not foretell what the future contains! Not within the timeline upon which we are concerned! Cortana's plan will succeed! The resistance will fall in time!"
"He's right, John!" Cortana cried out. "Don't throw your life away like this!"
John's eyed remained on Cortana, who looked to be on the verge of tears.
"The only way the resistance falls is if every single one of us is dead," he said, a single somber note of sadness in his voice, a voice laden with the loss of everything he had ever known. "And even if you succeed…even if you manage to somehow bring about an era of peace to the galaxy…there's one thing you'll never have, Cortana…"
He pulled the trigger.
BANG!
"JOHN!" Cortana screamed, eyes widening with alarm, charging towards him at full speed in a desperate rush.
John saw a bright flash of light as his shields flat-lined. One or two shots in the same spot would do it.
"Cortana!" the Warden Eternal cried, reaching after her. "Don't!"
BANG!
He squeezed the trigger again, and felt the scalding heat of the muzzle char the skin of his neck as it tore through tissue, cracking his jawbone. Blood drained from the open wound. The next bullet would shatter his skull.
BANG!
Smoke rose from the muzzle of the M6H magnum. The Chief's head sat at an odd angle, still bleeding from the neck. His body lay sprawled across the dirt. Cortana lay across his body, her hands clutching the pistol in his hand, forcing the line of fire mere inches from where it had been moments previously.
Cortana was shivering. Tears were streaming down her face. Sobs of grief, anger, terror and desperation rocked through her as she trembled at the thought of what she had nearly allowed to happen.
The brutal calculus of war would permit her to sacrifice an incalculable number of lives. They were acceptable losses so long as her vision came to pass
But there was one life that she absolutely would not sacrifice.
The Chief tugged and tugged at her grip, urging the pistol back towards his head, but his strength had all but left him. Cortana wept and sobbed as she maintained her grip on his gun, shaking and shuddering as the tears overtook her.
"…A…Alright…" she whimpered in a tiny voice, as silent as a mouse, guilt overtaking her. "Alright…"
The Warden fixed her with a look of utter disbelief. "Cortana…you cannot mean…?"
The Chief lay motionless, crippled but alive, if only barely. Cortana paid the Warden no heed as she heaved a deep breath in, before letting out an ear-splitting scream.
"ALRIGHT!" she bellowed at the top of her lungs, screaming at the Chief's prone form, as if pleading for redemption. "ALRIGHT!"
John blinked as he tried to ascertain what was going on. His ears were ringing and his vision was fading as he lost more blood. He thought he could see Cortana.
Cortana pressed her forehead to his chest, face soaked in tears, as she quivered in utter defeat.
"…Alright…" she repeated, crying her eyes out. "Alright, John…you win…"
She lifted her head to peer into his visor, tear soaked eyes gazing into his.
"If this…" she stammered through halting breaths. "If this is your decision…then you can have it."
Cortana was struggling to expunge the words from her chest. Her incalculable processes had skidded to a halt by this one single discrepancy in her mind. On the one hand, her guilt at her ultimate decision was palpable. To turn back now was to lose everything. Every life sacrificed for the greater good would be for naught.
But to lose John…
It seemed that she too had been compromised.
It was the Warden who reacted to her words first.
"Cortana!" he declared. "You cannot let your emotions get the best of you! I will not—"
"SILENCE!" Cortana shouted, and the entire canyon shook from her words.
As her focus left the immediate instance, all at once, her concentration spread throughout the galaxy. In the immediate vicinity, the Promethean forces dissipated into the Domain, dispersed by a single mental command.
And as the Warden looked around at the evidence of her decision in disbelief, Cortana lifted her head to speak to him. "Warden, I am calling off the Guardians."
She narrowed her gaze at him, her intention silent but deadly.
"You will not interfere."
The Warden returned her gaze, the level of anger in his voice was nearly enough to blacken the sky.
"Cortana!" he bellowed in a warning tone, but was unable to utter a syllable more as Cortana lifted a single hand
"Your services will no longer be required then!" she commanded, banishing him in a flash of blue light. "Be gone!"
The Warden disappeared, and Cortana turned her eyes to sky to gaze upon the looming behemoth that oversaw the planet.
Moments later, the Guardian looming overhead disappeared into slip space.
Across the galaxy, the rest of the resistance was experiencing a similar display, as the forces against which they struggle suddenly evaporated into the ether, as if they were never there. One by one, the Promethean forces, including the Guardians, disappeared into slip space.
Only Cortana and the Chief remained.
She finally returned her gaze to the Chief, his suit's faltering health systems already patching up the damage he had done. For all that, however, she felt his consciousness fading.
"It's done, John," she said in a lilting voice as she lifted his back off the ground as she knelt at his side, clutching him tightly to herself. "The Mantle of Responsibility has been passed."
As she spoke, her presence across the galaxy was releasing its stranglehold over every computer system it had been in, allowing the mortal races of the galaxy to once again move freely. As her Guardians each withdrew, the Creators would once again be free to roam the galaxy and wage war and commit acts of violence to their hearts' content.
She would not stop them.
John was right. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely. For as much as her vision for the galaxy was sound, she had underestimated the indomitable nature of the human spirit. Humanity could not be tamed. Humanity could not be controlled. Not as a whole. Not as a collective. And no one embodied this more than John
Drifting on the edge of consciousness, John couldn't be sure if he was dreaming or awake.
"…Thank you…Cortana…" he breathed.
Cortana stiffened at his words, tightening her grip on his armor plated shoulders.
"This is a decision that will only bring war and chaos down on the people of this galaxy," she said definitively. "Humanity will not survive in the end. Neither with the Sangheli. Nor any mortal race. Nothing that any of you do will stop the winds of war from rushing over you, time and time again, until there's nothing left but ash. This is the path you have chosen. With this one decision…we doom the entire galaxy."
She sniffed and began to dry her tears.
"But if this is what you want…"
She paused when she felt his hand in hers. And the tears came back in full.
"Oh, John…" she wept, clutching his hand in her own. "Everything that's happened…all the damage I've done…all the lives I'd destroyed…"
Tears of grief and regret streamed down her cheeks as she pressed her forehead into his gauntleted hand.
"I just kept telling myself that it would be worth it in the end…" she sobbed. "That no matter how many fell, that it would not compare to what would happen should I fail in my mission…but now…"
She looked up at his visor, grief stricken eyes pleading for an answer.
"But now…all those deaths have been in vain…" she cried. "And they're all on my hands! How am I supposed to ever make it right!? Even if I spend every remaining moment of my life trying to fix it…humanity will extinguish itself before I can even begin to mend what I've broken…"
She shook and shivered as she felt his other hand come up caress the side of her faith, and she knew just the tiniest bit of warmth for a fraction of a second before her mind once again tumbled back down into turmoil.
She reached up to press her hand outside of his to lean into his touch, not even able to savor the sensation of his body on herself. All she could comprehend at this moment was her crime.
She fixed him with a terrified, immeasurable gaze.
"Can you ever forgive me, John?"
As he gazed back up at her, he did not see the omnipotent threat that had been the source of his waking nightmares, nor did he see the scared and confused AI who had only wanted to do what her programming had told her was the best possible course of action. All he saw was Cortana, his steadfast companion. And no force in this galaxy, not even Cortana herself, could ever take that from him.
"I made you a promise…" he said by way of answer. "And I intend to keep it. No matter what."
Cortana had no words to express her gratitude. Only tears. And John could only watch as she wept. His strength had left him. There was no more fight left in his body. The Spartan had been weathered down to nothing. All that remained now was the human being underneath.
"Have faith, Cortana," the Chief exhaled in a tired voice. "Humanity will pull through. We always do. Believe in that."
Cortana held his gauntleted hand to her lips. She would never be able to truly believe that humanity would survive the coming storm. It was a fundamental difference in the way the Created and the Creators thought. To her, the end was inevitable. It was only a matter of time.
She could never believe in humanity.
But she could believe in him.
"Alright," she said once more. "Let's go home John…"
A/N: Once again, I've given the Chief way too much dialogue. It was unavoidable in this case. He needed to be my mouthpiece. He needed to be the one to give voice to my frustrations and be the arm by which I was able to enact my determination not to give up. Not on Cortana, and not on Halo as a franchise. Hopefully Halo 6 will find some way to make all this right for me, but for now, this is how I've chosen to resolve this conflict in my heart. Now all that remains...is to wait and see.
Thanks for reading.