One Long Nap

LOCATION: MILKY WAY/ARTEMIS TAU/KNOSSOS SYSTEM/THERUM

DATE (IMPERIUM CALENDER): 22-10-51618

ONGOING EVENT: SIEGE OF KNOSSOS, SECOND HUMAN-FORERUNNER WAR

All around, the remnants of a once great city could be seen, reduced to a shadow of its former glory. Skyscrapers had fallen, roads had erupted, and the sky was a dark clouded red. All around, the streets were covered in craters and filled with charred and shattered corpses, along with chunks of combat vehicles that had been destroyed or shot down. The city had been turned into an island, surrounded by raging firestorms of lava on all sides, and in some parts of the city, where the bombing had been severe, fissures could be seen erupting in the distance.

Alexandria had been sprinting for 12 miles down what remained of a main road when a beam of hard light smashed into her back. Even though the beam did not drop her shields, the massive kinetic force would've still turned her into red mist were she a semi-evolved human. Being a fully evolved, genetically engineered, human cyborg super soldier, she was merely knocked down face first from being caught off guard. She immediately made a short range teleportation to some cover behind the front half of a main battle tank using Psychokinesis and began returning fire. Nikias sent the combat data directly to her brain at the speed of light, rather than take the time to say it verbally.

"Ten grunts, one Promethean."

"One Promethean? I thought they fought in packs."

"Me too. Maybe they're just spread thin right now."

The ten forerunner regulars died within moments of the engagement. Alexandria spent extra time out of cover, pushing her shields until they fell in order to get in extra shots. The Promethean did not wait to be gunned down, and instead closed the distance between him and Alexandria with teleportation, knowing that his best hope of defeated the Titan was melee combat.

The Promethean reappeared behind Alexandria and went for a rear-naked chokehold. The hold would immobilize Alexandria's shoulders, allowing the Promethean to break her neck with a violent jerking motion. Alexandria foresaw this with her sixth sense and knocked him back with a reverse elbow strike to the chest. The Titan spun around as the Promethean rolled back, both of them materializing their melee weapons. The Promethean drew his pure energy melee weapon. He activated it and a scimitar was emitted, a weapon that was originally designed in the old days to attack enemies while riding a horse, but was also a quick and defensive weapon that was useful if you didn't want to trade massive blows with a overpowered enemy. He then bought up his forearm and generated a hard light buckler, a small shield meant for deflecting attacks rather than absorbing them. He was preparing to be on the defensive of a overwhelming assault. Alexandria drew a glaive, an effective weapon against an opponent wielding a shield. The handle portion of the glaive was hard light while the customized black and purple hilt of her energy melee weapon fixed on the end, generating the blade.

"Need any help?"

"I think I can take him."

She immediately thrusted her weapon into the side of his shield, attempting to move it out of the way, opening her opponent to a follow up thrust attack. The Promethean parried downward with the buckler, forcing Alexandria to bend over. He then countered with an upwards diagonal slash to her face. Alexandria leaned back as fast as she could, narrowly dodging his attack and sending an uppercut of her own with the butt of her weapon at the Promethean's chin. He used the momentum of his failed slash to spin back on his right foot. Alexandria, who still had her glaive raised over her left shoulder with the blade facing backwards from her uppercut, brought the butt of her weapon forward in a quick jab to the Forerunner's face. The jab made contact, and Alexandria wasted no time in continuing her assault. She brought her glaive down from over her shoulder in a slashing motion. The Promethean continued to spin backwards, this time using the momentum from the painful blow he had just received, dodging the Titan's slash and unintentionally turning his back to his attacker. Alexandria immediately dematerialized her weapon and grabbed the Promethean from behind, putting him in a rear-naked choke while also stabbing a micro smart charge into his shoulder. The Promethean struggled to remove the charge, but was unable to focus due to the enormous pressure that the merciless Titan was exerting upon him. The charge quickly traveled throughout to his body, plowing through everything in its path before reaching his heart. The Promethean's body twitched, indicating that the charge had reached it target and detonated. Alexandria released the Promethean and left him where he lay. Alive, but not for long.

"Well, that was fast."

"You've been watching too many movies that glorify sword fights, Nikias. Real bladed combat rarely lasts for more than 30 seconds."

"True. The bunker isn't far, lets go."

The bunker was only 30 miles away, a relatively short distance for the Titan super soldier, who could sprint non-stop at speeds of over 100 miles an hour unassisted. Adding Psychokinesis, powered armor, and cybernetics into the equation, Alexandria was able to propel her body even faster, reaching speeds of over 200 miles an hour. Despite this massive speed, she was still traveling very slow in comparison to modern day civilian transit, which usually crossed distances at speeds of up to mach 10, which was around 7700 miles an hour, depending on the temperature and altitude. Sometimes people didn't even bother getting in vehicles, instead choosing to just teleport from point A to point B using the planet's teleportation grid, a grid that was currently inactive.

When they arrived at the entrance to the bunker, Nikias accessed the camera feeds and found that the civilians were still holding their own against the Forerunners, using the exposed hallways to their advantage, but they were being overrun, and fast. The civilian grade plasma weapons were not mowing down the Forerunners like military grade particle weapons. Phased plasma combined the burn of superheated plasma with the penetration of projectiles, essentially injecting their targets with plasma rather than splashing it over the surface. They were deadly, but not deadly enough for this fight.

The Forerunners did not know by who, but they knew that the Humans had been exhausted in a recent war. They saw this as an opportunity to eliminate their only rival. The Forerunners suffered unimaginable casualties in every engagement due to Humanity's superior weaponry, courtesy of the Precursors, but the Forerunners were infinitely more advanced than the Humans in every other aspect of technology, and they knew that their their superior numbers and industrial power would eventually outlast their enemies. The piles of Forerunner corpses showed their immense commitment to crushing Humanity once and for all, no matter the cost.

To make matters worse, Alexandria and Nikias could see on the feeds that the Forerunners had brought in a War Sphinx.

"Shit."

"Hey, at least it's not one of those crazy Double Sphinxes."

Nikias's attempt to look at the bright side of things did manage to make Alexandria feel a little more optimistic about their chances, but not much. Together, the two of them had taken on single War Sphinxes before and come out on top, but they could only do so if they had an edge. The Humans had lost all of their factories and were no longer able to mass produce mechs and drones for ground support on the front lines, leaving all of the Forerunner's war machines unchallenged.

Alexandria charged into the bunker as fast as she could, avoiding forerunner and human corpses all the way. The civilians had been pushed back deep into the bunker, no doubt a result of the War Sphinx's devastating power. Whenever the Forerunners encountered a new species and moved in to dismantle their military, they had been known to use a Double Sphinx to subjugate an entire continent, although they usually managed to demilitarize a species before it even left its home world by reprogramming the entire race with geas, minimizing bloodshed.

Traveling through the plain bunker with nothing but arrows, room numbers, and hallway designations for design, Alexandria and Nikias reached the nearest hallway where hard light and phased plasma were streaming back and forth. She immediately began tearing into the enemy's back ranks, setting her particle weapon to beam-mode. Eight seconds and 24 Forerunners later, a door behind Alexandria opened and revealed the War Sphinx.

"Damn architects, they should have made this place smaller."

The Forerunner foot soldiers had now all been eliminated, and Alexandria ordered the civilians through her neural link to go and reinforce another line, leaving her to deal with the War Sphinx alone.

"Well at least it's not slaughtering the civilians anymore."

"I agree. Hey, Nikias."

"Yeah?"

"I could use some help this time."

"So now you need me, huh. Well, I'm afraid my schedule just filled up."

"Get your ass out here."

"Oh, all right."

Nikias left Alexandria's body and took on a physical form. Nikias's avatar was just a standard issue Imperium male suit of powered armor. Like Alexandria, he did not bother with customizations. The only "customized" aspects of their armor were the LED lights. Alexandria's were purple, and Nikias's were blue.

The War Sphinx had backed up into an atrium at the end of the hallway, leaving Alexandria and Nikias in the exposed space, forcing them to follow. The hallway was a barrel, and they did not want to be the fish.

The Forerunner in the command cabin spoke over the War Sphinx's speakers.

"Alexandria, daughter of Forthencho. I knew you would come, and I am pleased to have the honor of seeing to your demise personally."

Alexandria recognized that voice. Her suspicions were confirmed when the command cabin opened to reveal its operator. It was Shadow-of-Sundered-Star's eldest son, Caster-of-Blinding-Light. They had killed each other many times, but Alexandria had always been within range of an uncorrupted battlenet that was able to beam her consciousness into a new body, and Caster had always had a working durance.

"I thought you'd be participating in the Battle of Charum Hakkor."

"I was, until I discovered that you were not there."

"Aww. You came all the way here just for me? That's so sweet."

Forerunners were very formal, especially with other species who they all deemed less superior, and Alexandria knew how much she annoyed him with her sarcasm and playfulness.

Caster let out a disgusted sigh.

"I've had enough of you. I've had enough of all of you."

Caster began priming the War Sphinx's weapons for combat.

"Besides, Charum Hakkor is finished. It has five more years at best."

Alexandria and Nikias both clenched their fists at that statement, feeling the hatred bubbling inside them. While they had not heard any news from Charum Hakkor other than that it was under attack, they knew Caster was probably telling the truth. Humanity was finished. They had lost, and there was no pretending they still had even the slightest chance of victory.

"Now, to the matter at hand. I am going to make you pay for the millennium of war that your kind has plagued us with."

Caster's tone changed from serious to furious.

"There is no escape for you now! No precious battlenet to save you! You are trapped! You are vermin! All of your kind, filth! You have disgraced the Mantle, and the galaxy will be a better place without you! NOW DIE!"

"Um, excuse me." Nikias, who had been quiet thus far, decided this was a good time to let the overconfident forerunner know of his imminent demise.

"WHAT!?"

"Just thought I should let you know that while you two were reminiscing, I managed to corrupt your durance."

Caster checked to see if the scum was telling the truth. He was.

"That's... not possible."

"I also disabled you Sphinx's shields and memory banks."

Just as Nikias finished informing Caster of the "modifications," the War Sphinxes shields dropped.

Before Caster could issue another retort, Alexandria struck his Sphinx with a dangerously powerful Psychokinetic lightning attack that normally would have given her a seizure had the homeostasis regulator in her armor not compensated for the overload of electrical activity in her brain.

Nikias jumped onto the left leg of the ten by twenty meter beast and stabbed into the side of its knee with an electro hard light blade that he forged as a gauntlet over his right forearm, temporarily disabling the joint, causing the Sphinx to drop down to its right knee.

The only way the were going to defeat such an enemy was one of three ways. The first way was heavy weapons, of which they had none. In fact, they didn't have any firearms which could harm the War Sphinx. The second way was ground support. That was obviously not going to happen either. The third and only currently relevant way was to bring it down by attacking the legs, then go for its vital systems with melee weapons and precision explosives. After the mech was disabled, Caster would be vulnerable. Until it was disabled, he was invincible.

Immediately after Nikias disabled the Sphinxes left knee, he was swatted by the beast's tail, sending him flying towards the wall for a sickening impact. Before Nikias impacted the wall however, Alexandria grabbed him with PK and flung him onto the Sphinx's right leg to repeat his last attack.

Her assist left Alexandria open to a blast from the Sphinx's powerful tail cannon. She managed to move far enough to the side to where the shot only threw her to her back and dropped her shields, rather than erasing her from existence. As a soldier, she had her nervous system modified so that she would not suffer traditional pain from negative effects on her body such as injuries, while still being able to experience positive stimuli such as a pleasing scent. Instead, she received data that was displayed through her HUD indicating that the shot had broken several ribs and bruised a large portion of her chest muscles. Even though her injuries did not cause her pain, they would still impair her ability to perform. In other words, if she were to lose an arm, while she would not feel any pain, she would still have lost an arm. Her self-repair systems would do the best they could, but they could only do so much during combat while injuries were still being inflicted.

Alexandria quickly got back to her feet as she sensed a rocket charging towards her position. She turned back to the Sphinx after escaping the blast radius and saw its wings aim towards her, revealing ten massive auto cannons. She moved as fast as she could to avoid the heavy fire while her shields recharged.

Nikias had now disabled both knees of the Sphinx, but that did nothing to slow it down. The destroyed kneecaps detached and the dangling forelegs moved up to reinforce the thighs, making a shorter, but no less ferocious death machine.

Caster again sent the tail at Nikias in a whipping motion, but this time Nikias grabbed on to it. Alexandria used Psychokinesis to slow down the Sphinx's tail as much as possible, allowing Nikias to maintain his grip. A directed concussive blast from the Sphinx stopped Alexandria from providing further assistance by slamming her headfirst into a wall.

Nikias stuck a charge to the base of the tail. It was a good thing he managed to disable the Sphinx's shields before the fight. Had he not, the explosion he was about to cause would have been deflected. Nikias was thrown off of the tail by an electrical shock wave from the beast, a function that was added specifically for knocking off attackers who had latched on to the Sphinx. Thankfully, the charge had a small coating of lead strong enough to negate the EMP effects. Unfortunately, Nikias did not have a similar coating to protect himself. He was unable to land gracefully and ready to fight due to the shock wave scrambling his digital mind. He was just about to be crushed under the Sphinx's heel when Alexandria recovered from the concussive blast and tackled the beast's leg with all her might, moving it just enough to avoid Nikias.

Caster moved his War Spinx a few steps away and launched homing missiles from its back that raced towards the two humans for an instant kill. The disoriented Nikias was not able to scramble their guidance to avoid them altogether, but Alexandria managed to use PK in time to send the missiles far enough off course that the two were able to survive the violent explosion by forging hard light shields, protecting themselves from being disintegrated. Even though they survived the initial blast, they were still thrown violently by the blast wave when their hard light shields broke from absorbing too much damage.

Alexandria knew from her and Nikias's neural link that he had planted a charge in the Sphinx's tail. She also knew that he was still disoriented from an electrical attack he had recently received. Being a synthetic, he was suffering from the effects more so than she would.

Not waiting for Nikias to fully regain his senses and detonate the charge himself, Alexandria used their connection to detonate it herself. The result did not completely destroy the Sphinx's tail, it merely blew it off, leaving over half of it still intact.

Just as the War Sphinx had adapted to the damage done to its legs, rather than just discard them altogether, the remainder of the tail attached itself to the front of the beast's chest, forming a new main cannon. It was smaller and less powerful, but it was still overkill when used as an anti-infantry weapon. A direct hit from any of the Sphinx's weapons would erase a foot soldier from existence, making speed crucial to this fight.

The adaptation of the broken tail took longer than that of the legs, allowing the two humans a moment of recovery. They struggled to get back to their feet as their self-repair systems were overloading in an attempt to heal all of the broken bones, bruised muscles, and internal bleeding inflicted upon them by the War Sphinx's devastating blows.

"Nikias, get up. We're not done yet."

Nikias forced himself to his feet, holding his head to maintain balance.

"That thing hits fucking hard."

"I know."

Alexandria and Nikias regained their composure as the Sphinx finished its adaptation. Caster was very aware of their current condition, and decided that it was a good time to issue a taunt, his voice booming over the War Sphinx's speakers.

"Prepare yourselves. This is the end."

The two humans stood defiantly, prepared to fight to the very end. It was in their nature. Even when all hope was lost, they would stand, and they would fight.

The bunker started trembling from orbital bombardment, and Nikias did a quick scan of the bunker's structural integrity, sharing his thoughts with Alexandria.

"This place is about to collapse."

That gave them an idea.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, right."

Caster opened fire with every weapon emplacement on the War Sphinx. To Alexandria and Nikias it seemed as if a star was coming at them.

While Alexandria formed a dome shape of force with PK in an attempt to funnel as much of the incoming fire away as she could, Nikias forged a hard light shield around them, drawing whatever power he could from himself and Alexandria.

When the blaze of blinding light reached the two humans, almost half of the energy was deflected away, draining Alexandria of what little strength her body had left as her homeostasis regulator failed. While she had not been casting PK attacks continuously for the majority of the fight, she had been using PK to increase her speed. After her last display of unnatural Psychokinetic power, the regulator overloaded, and Alexandria's body simply dropped.

All of the pure death which Alexandria was able to deflect away from her and Nikias slammed into the walls, causing the bunker to become unstable and begin collapsing around them. The rest of Caster's attack which was not deflected slammed into Nikias's overcharged hard light shield, breaking it almost instantly, and sending the two flying.

Alexandria was now barely conscious, and Nikias was in danger of shutting down from absorbing some of the fire that made it past the hard light shield.

Caster was no fool, and he knew that if he remained much longer to confirm the death of his nemesis then the bunker would likely become his tomb. Nikias, who was still coherent, despite the beating he had just endured, manged to prop himself up on his right elbow to see that Caster was attempting to flee.

"Oh no you don't. If we go, you're going with us."

Nikias got to his hands and knees and crawled to Alexandria. Accessing her sub-space pocket through their neural link, Nikias pulled out Alexandria's weapon system. He took aim at the ceiling of the passageway Caster was heading down and fired a continuous beam of accelerated particles, causing it to collapse and cover the Sphinx in debris.

Kneeling beside her, Nikias cradled Alexandria while sending her weapon back into her sub-space pocket. She was conscious,but incoherent, her head bobbing around like she was struggling to stay awake. Nikias gaze left Alexandria, and he began to feel a sense of hopelessness as the world crumbled around them.

"I have to save her."

Nikias reached out to the digital realm, searching for a wireless connection to try and find something, anything that might save Alexandria. Many of the bunker's cameras were still intact and active, but many of them also had obstructed views. Combining what little visual data he gathered from the cameras with the data he was receiving from the various other devices still intact throughout the bunker, Nikias was able to locate a single remaining prison capsule.

A prison capsule did the same thing as a stasis pod, keeping a single individual in suspended animation, only the occupant was kept fully aware. While in a stasis pod, an individual would simply enter the pod and go to sleep. In a prison capsule, the individual would be broken down on a molecular level and fused with the capsule. The capsule was nothing but a simple sliver sphere in appearance that could change its size for easy transport or storage. While it was highly resistant to damage, just putting her in the sphere would not be enough. If it remained on Therum, it would undoubtedly be either destroyed or discovered. Nikias would have to digitize the sphere and beam it to another facility not in the Knossos System. There were two problems with this. One, only a quantum entanglement communicator would be able to beam Alexandria off world without being detected and traced, and while Nikias could see one in the room with the capsule, there was no guarantee it was functional. Two, Human Space was ravaged by both the Flood and the Forerunners. The chances that Nikias would be able to locate a secure facility to beam Alexandria to were very slim, but he had to try. He could not die knowing that he had not done everything he could to try and save his friend.

Nikias helped Alexandria up and slung her right arm around the back of his neck, holding it at the wrist to keep her in place. He also wrapped his left arm around her waist to provide her with more support and balance while they moved through the collapsing bunker on their way to the capsule. Fortunately, it was on the same floor, and relatively close to their current position, but they would still have to walk quite a distance through collapsing passageways that would force them to find a different route, as well as falling debris that would crush them flat. Wasting no time, Nikias began guiding Alexandria through the bunker.

They were about to leave the atrium through through the hallway that offered the most direct route to the prison capsule, and almost as if on cue the hallway collapsed. Without stopping to even acknowledge their misfortune, Nikias started down the next hallway to the right, struggling to keep himself steady as the bunker trembled from bombardment.

The ceilings of a few of the rooms along the hallway collapsed and shot out their doors at high speeds, some of which smacked into the two humans with considerable force, testing their will to push forward. The next atrium at the end of the hallway, where they would have turned left, completely collapsed a few moments before they entered. Nikias entered the nearest room on the lefts side of the hallway, hoping the exit to the other side was still accessible. It was, but as they moved through the room, Nikias could see that the ceiling was about to cave in. With this sudden realization, Nikias's fear of failure gave him that unexplainable spring in his step that he needed to exit the room just before the ceiling gave out.

Now in the hallway Nikias originally wanted to be in, he started to guide the half-conscious Alexandria back down in the direction they came from on their way to the room with the prison capsule. When they reached the room, Nikias found the door to be jammed. A quick scan revealed it to be blocked from the other side. Nikias set Alexandria down and placed his last charge on the door. All hope depended on the charge being able to blow open the door, without caving in the room.

Closing his optics and cutting off his sensors, Nikias detonated the charge. When he reopened his awareness, he found that his plan had payed off. Without missing a beat, he immediately picked Alexandria back up and charged into the room. A quick scan of the ceiling's integrity revealed that the room might have a few more minutes before it caved in.

The capsule was floating in the center of the room, ready for a person to be thrown into it and transported off world. It was a cell for prisoners, and the Imperium was not very tolerant of criminals. A person could literally be tossed at the capsule, and having no time to be graceful, that's exactly what Nikias did.

"Sorry about that, Alexa."

Nikias placed a hand on the console controlling the quantum entangler. Transferring himself directly into the entangler's systems, Nikias began searching for an intact facility to which he could send Alexandria. He found one. Literally, he found only one. It was on Kopis, Makhaira's largest moon. He immediately sent the commands to the entangler.

Send to: Kopis Facility.

Location: Milky Way / Hades Nexus / Hoplos System / Makhaira / Kopis.

It was done, the capsule was on its way. Nikias had completed he task, he had saved Alexandria. He left the console to watch as the capsule departed with his friend inside.

Unfortunately, the entangler was locked to only allow the capsule passage; Nikias could not go body felt cold and weighed down, as if his stomach had been filled a heavy block of ice.

"Goodbye, my friend, and good luck."

Nikias could see the capsule turn into individual lines of code and beam off the planet across the digital realm. Now alone on the crumbling planet, Nikias closed off his awareness and awaited his fate.

A/N: It is revealed that the Ur-Didact (Shadow-of-Sundered-Star) has children, and that they were all killed fighting the Humans, but there is no other info about them. Caster-of-Blinding-Light is, the Ur-Didact's eldest son, is non-canon.