This would have been up sooner, but I watched Final Fantasy Advent Children online when I should have been working on this and that's why it took so long. I know there is no Star Wars yet, but have patience, it will be here soon. Thanks of all the reviews. Beware Halo spoilers for both novels and games. -- is a paragraph break, # is a perspective break.
Reunion
"Do you know why you are here?"
All around him the children looked at each other, none of them knew why.
"We are in the middle of a brutal struggle with enemies who want to destroy all we have worked for, all we have built, they wish to destroy."
The children drew breath at that. None of them didn't know about the fighting, but to hear it described so.
"We are losing too many men in the battles and we need you to…"
"That will be all SCPO Mendez, I will talk to them now."
"Of course Dr. Halsey."
It was a woman, older, with steely blue eyes and black hair with more than a few streaks of grey. She had her hair in a bun and gave off the feeling of intelligence that left others wondering how much she knew about them already. Her searching eyes came across him and rested there briefly.
--
Her eyes changed, they lost their colour, her skin also fading and eventually he was looking at a different woman, all blue, with short hair and series of lines running across her body lengthways. An AI! he realised with a shock. She was talking to him in the same voice. "They let me pick, did you know that? Choose whichever Spartan I wanted."
After that he heard two voices speaking the same words, "You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies."
As he watched the two women from his mind's eye came together and merged, forming a single identity, a single voice. The entity reached out and took his hand. A hand that was as insubstantial as a wraith. Then suddenly the hand disappeared into his and a voice echoed inside his head.
"There are two of us in here now."
--
It was another memory; this one was of a small girl in the middle of a sea of grass, lying on her back looking straight up at the sky.
"Do you think we'll ever meet them?" she asked him.
--
Now he saw the sky alight in flames. Overhead there were shapes, things that rained fire down on the earth and set it ablaze. Ablaze so that everything was utterly burned and nothing ever survived. Then out of the wreckage came a tall figure. Armoured and dangerous looking it raised a fist and roared at him!
--
Only to be struck down from behind by another figure. A figure dressed in green armour, bearing a rifle. The figure reached out a hand and gripped his.
"Come on."
--
Now he saw more aliens, except that these were not the aliens he had seen before. These were more monstrous, ugly, brutes. He was fighting them, fighting them with all he had to defend a place. And he was alone, even the voice in his head, which talked constantly just out of range of hearing, was silent. No, he was no longer alone. Another figure, one of the earlier aliens was with him, them both working in tandem to help one another.
--
Now he was a child once more. Standing before a giant creature, the likes of which no one had ever seen. It was greenish grey and seemed to be composed of rotting flesh! He almost screamed at the sight, but something held him back. A voice shook the floor and the room and almost deafened him as it cried, "Child of my enemy, why have you come!"
--
Back again with the class and in front of him she was standing and talking to them all.
"Does anyone know what you are going to become?"
The children all looked like they knew, but were afraid to say so.
"What about you?" the woman asked, looking right at him. "John?"
Her smile fell and her voice became deeper, and it began to echo in his mind.
"John? John! John! Master Chief!"
--
"Master Chief Spartan John 117!"
He opened his eyes.
#
"He's awake!"
Light registered on his retinas, and he could vaguely make out shadowy figures.
"Will he recover well construct?" asked a deep voice.
"He should recover fine, provided he gets active as soon as possible. It will give him a chance to use those muscles of his." Said the female voice.
"Good, he'll be able to help us in our search." Said an older voice.
"Doubt it sir, he wasn't with the others, and they disappeared after they hijacked that Covenant cruiser." The female voiced put in.
"Where am I?" he asked. And with that, John 117, the Master Chief sat up and looked around him.
--
He recognised the female figure first. She was glowing blue, with code running lengthways up her body, close cropped holographic hair and she had the voice of the one in his dreams. She smiled at him. "Hello again chief."
"Cortana." he said in recognition.
Beside her was the tall alien in the golden armour he remembered from his dream, the one who had stood by him. The alien reached out his hand to him.
"Well met Spartan."
"Arbiter."
The last man in the room was a tall man, dressed in a white dress uniform with gold braid running over his left shoulder and a peaked cap on his head. Several medals winked at him from the Admirals chest. With a single graceful movement that was also a powerful motion, the Master Chief snapped upright and saluted.
"Admiral Lord Hood, sir! Master Chief John 117 reporting for duty!"
"At ease son." Hood nodded to Cortana and the Arbiter. "I'll wait up in the bridge, let him gather his senses first."
"Got it Admiral."
The Arbiter nodded respectfully to him as he left.
--
The Master Chief sat up and looked around, his brain taking stock of the surrounding in moments, analyzing angles and noting blind spots. The Arbiter gave a small noise in his throat, which the Chief recognised as a chuckle. Sangheili had only ever given those sounds when they were about to kill him, so he assumed that it was a chuckle.
"Arbiter, what are we doing here."
"I believe your construct is the one who should be asked in relation to this. She has been here for longer than you and has also been able to ascertain the situation better."
"We had to manhandle your pod back aboard the Cormorant when we got you out of the wreckage Chief." Cortana began. "For a while I was worried that the crash had killed you but I remembered that I did a scan of your vitals after we hit, that and a scan of your brain signals which showed no changes. So you survived again. Now you're here."
"Where exactly is here?"
"A secluded section of the hospital wing of the Redemption, the lead ship in the Redemption class of Supercarriers, and the flagship of the Combined First Fleet of the New Covenant."
John sat back again. He thought for a moment.
"Where am I?" he asked again and Cortana thought she heard a small element of disbelief enter his voice. He just couldn't get his head around the idea.
"Perhaps he'd better see for himself Arbiter."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes. He needs to see for himself, or he won't believe it."
The Arbiter crossed to the wall. At his nod Cortana extinguished the light and slowly the panel slid down to reveal what lay on the other side. The Chief got up and walked over towards it.
--
It was magnificent. Beyond that pane of glass was a wonder, rarely seen, and certainly only seen once or twice by the Chief. Almost a thousand ships were on the other side, all of them flying in formation, or in the case of the fighters, pirouetting around the fleet. Ships of all shapes and sizes were there, from UNSC frigates of the Dawns class, to Assault Carriers of the Covenant. Many thousands of beings inhabited this ship and were involved in the running of it. Former enemies had come together to work in maintaining their alliance, fragile as it was. A CCS class Battlecruiser passed by, moving at a speed higher than the Redemption and headed for the head of the fleet. On a parallel course moved a UNSC carrier and, as the Chief watched, a flight of Longsword fighters took off and joined with a flight of Seraph fighters from one of the Assault Carriers. They flew past the Supercarrier in a dazzling display, a display that likely had been brought on by their former animosity. But now work had to be done, and there was nothing like a joint task force to assuage people's fears.
--
"Tell me about this ship Arbiter." Cortana was back in his head again and the two warriors were walking through the massive ship again like they had done when on the way to the Ark before the final cataclysmic battle.
"The Redemption class were built as a result of the New Covenants trying to work together. It carries improved shields, better armour and a complement of seventy fighters. It also boasts, pulse laser turrets, two located on the sides and one under the belly, a hundred Swordfish missile pods, twenty two Shiva bombs, four plasma torpedo launchers, a swivel MAC mounted dorsally, and the best of all, a Weapon/Anti-Ship Type 12 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Cannon, or as it is known colloquially, the Spartan Cannon. She carries a complement of almost seven hundred thousand, both crew and landing troops, but can be run by a skeleton crew of two hundred and fifty. Six onboard constructs, seven including your own Spartan."
--
They turned a corner and began walking down towards the main hanger bay. The Arbiter continued.
"Also onboard we carry an assault army. Two hundred tanks, including Wraiths, Scorpions and Tarantulas. We have five Scarabs, a full surface air wing and a fleet of other vehicles. The armouries are situated in the base of the ship, along the keel I think you humans call it. There are also foundries, workshops to make repairs as well. Both plasma based weaponry and ballistics, jump packs and vehicles are all repaired down in the foundries. When taken together, this ship could conquer a planet alone and then hold of the subsequent attack single handed."
--
"That's not all Chief," Cortana added from inside his helmet. "This ship carries a Class Seven slipspace engine, constructed from a Shaw-Fujikawa Class Three and a Covenant Type 60 generator. That, plus the development of a Forerunner Dreadnaught engine, means the ship can travel faster than any other ship in the fleet. It generally does not, however as this would result in it being the only ship present on arrival. The ship carries the standard fusion engines, although they are more powerful and are based off a combination of Sangheili and Human engine types. Overall the ship is exactly ten thousand, five hundred metres long, twelve hundred metres wide and nine hundred in height. It took seven years to build."
--
"Seven years! How long was I out?" the Chief's voice hardened at that.
The Arbiter was silent. Cortana didn't answer.
"I think I have a right to know how long I have been missing for."
There was still no answer. Finally Cortana answered him.
"John, we've been gone almost eleven years."
He couldn't believe that. Eleven years of progress had been missed by him at this stage, eleven years. How much had changed in all the time he had been gone? How many more Spartans were still alive? He knew that several of his old team had been listed as missing in action and had just disappeared out of the galaxy. Were they still alive? Had they been found? What about Dr. Halsey? More importantly, what now for a man bred solely for war?"
--
"Chief!" Cortana's voice brought him back to the present. "Are you okay?"
"I'm just… a little shocked by the news Cortana."
"Perhaps you are in need of some exercise Spartan, there is a gym farther down the ship near the medical facilities." The Arbiter advised.
"You could be right Arbiter. But I'm not sure what I should do really…"
"Master Chief to the bridge, Lord Hoods orders!" the voice that came over the intercom reminded the Chief of his days on Reach when he was being trained initially. As the three of them began their walk towards the bridge, the Chief was aware of most of the crew stopping and staring at them as they passed. A lot of the older Marines would stop and salute the Chief and the Arbiter, whilst Elites would press one hand to their chest plates in a sign of respect. Grunts who were wandering around screamed and fled at the sight of the creature from their nightmares.
--
The Command Centre was truly worthy of the name and its size dictated the size of the entire warship. It was huge, with two levels. All power allocation and communications were run from this spot. The platform in the centre was occupied by two figures, Lord Hood and Rtas Vadum, the Ship Master of the carrier. They were both looking at a series of codes and maps that were running on the holographic screen in front of them. As they entered the entire room stood to attention. The Chief was slightly unnerved by this display. Normally a crew wouldn't give him this kind of attention or respect. He felt almost like an artefact, something that had been dug up and was there because of some nostalgic hold on to the past. Lord Hood noticed them.
"Spartan 117 welcome to the Redemption, I assume you've gotten a run down on the ship from the Arbiter and Cortana."
"Yes sir."
"Are you familiar with our objective Spartan?" Rtas asked him.
"I have not informed him of our mission yet, brother." The Arbiter put in quickly.
"Well you're going to find out now." Lord Hood turned back to the hologram and the Chief joined him. "We are looking to recover the rest of the missing Spartans. ONI has revealed that they started a third Spartan program, but the last batch were never finished."
"What happened to the other batches?"
"Annihilated on suicide missions!"
"Oh."
"Thing is, they disappeared almost at the same time as the rest of Blue Team, your old comrades. We have reason to suspect that they are all in the same location, due to a message that was intercepted by Cortana. However, when we went to investigate we found nothing but Sentinels and no planet Onyx. It appeared that the entire planet had been destroyed."
Rtas added what he knew to the layout. "Our own records indicate that a large fleet of separatists went to deal with the Spartans, before our alliance could take place. No trace of that fleet was ever recovered, but they headed for the same location. If your comrades are alive, then they should be there, but aren't."
"We were hoping you could let some light on the subject."
"I'm afraid I can't help you there sir. The last time I spoke to any of them was during the First Battle of Earth sir. After that, they disappeared."
"Dr. Halsey went with them. She was the one who sent the transmission, son."
Cortana spoke up at this point. "I remember that message, there was something in it about a major Forerunner artefact at the site. It is possible that this may be the cause of their disappearance. If so I think we should return to the site and begin a more thorough investigation."
Hood smiled. "Yes ma'am. As it happens we were going back anyway. The last time we were there the Sentinels were very hostile. With this ship we will be able to weather any assault by them."
He turned back to the screen as the Ship Master and the Arbiter got into their grav chairs and rose into the air. Rtas gave the order.
"Lock coordinates for the planet Onyx and set the jump to Slipspace!"
I've managed to get a new paragraph system in place. I hope it works. If you like the story or if you think that it could do with some work, please leave a review. I will answer either next chapter, or by PM. Thank you.
