After what seemed like close to an hour, I decided to take a break from the reading and decided to look around a little bit more. Some more people had come down here while I was reading. The Turian, Garrus or something, was doing something with the Mako. There was a woman standing at a workbench, cleaning rifles. Then, I saw another Krogan, leaning up against the wall, probably sleeping, or just thinking. I was just about to get back to reading when the intercom decided to announce its presence.

"Would the ground team please report to the comm room. That includes our new arrival." It was Shepard. Probably taking introducing me into her own hands. Seeing as how I took the opportunity to just sit around, I guess she's justified. Only problem was that I didn't know where this comm room was.

"You know where it is that we're going?" Saria piped up.

While I was thinking of a response, I saw Garrus stop what he was doing with the Mako, and walk towards the elevator. "No. I figure I'll just follow the Turian. He probably knows where to go."

"Fair enough."

I got up and followed Garrus into the elevator. It was a little cramped, but I didn't mind. What I did mind though was how slow the lift was going. It took long enough to have a quick conversation with Saria.

"Nick, there's something about this place you should know."

"What?"

"AIs are illegal here."

"Oh. Guess it's a good thing I kept you a secret, huh?"

"Yeah."

I could hear the worry in her voice. "Don't worry. It'll be all right."

For an elevator that seemed to go up only one floor, it took an abnormally long time to do it. I let Garrus step put first, and followed him around a corner and up some stairs. The comm room was just around another corner, with two guards. Why a comm room needed two half asleep guards was anyone's guess.

Inside the comm room was not at all like I thought it would look. I had pictured maybe a small room, able to handle 4 comfortably. Instead, there was a slightly raised walkway sloping down into the room, which opened up into a large circle shape. There were 6 chairs, three on each side of the circle, and three consoles for something, probably comms, directly opposite the door. 4 of the chairs were already filled by a human male, a human female, a female quarian, I think that was it, and Liara, who I now recognized as an Asari. Shepard was leaning up against the consoles, arms crossed.

"Good, you two are here. Now we're just waiting on Wrex."

I took it that Wrex was the Krogan from back in the bay. He didn't seem like a military type. Garrus sat down in one of the chairs, and not wanting to risk destroying the last chair, I just stood somewhat opposite Shepard. She seemed to notice.

"That chair right over there is still open, you know."

"I know. It doesn't look strong enough to support me."

"What do you mean?"

"When you weigh nearly half a ton in armor, you get used to standing real fast."

"Oh." Was all I got in return. Luckily, Wrex chose just this moment to walk into the comm room, halting the increasingly awkward conversation. He sat down in the last chair as the Commander stood a little straighter.

"Well, now that everyone's here," She took a second to glare at Wrex, who just gave a deep chuckle. "Let's get down to introductions. Thompson, you go first?"

I shrugged. "Sure. I'm Spartan Nick Thompson of the UNSC Spartan branch. Supersoldier extraordinaire."

The man spoke up. "Spartan? Is that a military rank?"

"Sort of. It's more of a designation then a rank. My actual rank is probably somewhere around a Sargent Major. Roughly equivalent to your rank of Gunnery Chief."

Shepard took advantage of the brief pause to get the conversation back under her control. "So, Kaiden, how about you introduce yourself, and we'll work our way around."

The man, Kaiden, was the one who responded. "Yes, ma'am. I'm Lieutenant Kaiden Alanko."

The other woman spoke next. "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams."

The quarian looked around nervously, or what I thought was nervously, and realized that everyone was waiting on her. "I'm Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. But you can just call me Tali."

The Krogan was next, and all he did was rumble "Urdnot Wrex."

Shepard once again took control. "Now, that the introductions are done, could you answer a few questions?"

I shrugged. "Sure."

"Good. First question. What were those aliens you were fighting in the vid?"

I knew that one was going to be first. "The little ones were Grunts. The bird ones with shields were Jackals. The big ones were Elites. The really big ones were Hunters. Or at least, that's what we called them. They were part of the terrorist group that formed after the Covenant was disbanded five or six years ago."

I could see Shepard thinking, trying to decide which question to decide on next. Finally, she settled on one. "The Covenant?"

I sighed. This was going to be a long one. "You all know that I think I came from an alternate universe, right?" There was a few nods around the room. "Here's why. We achieved inter-system transportation later than you, because there were no mass relays or element zero." That brought a gasp or two, and looks of confusion all around. "We made something else. A slipspace drive. It basically created a wormhole to another dimension, where the laws of physics don't quite apply. Using this, we weren't limited the way you were by only using the mass relays. We could go almost anywhere, it just took a long time, and was a little unpredictable. Anyway, eventually, we had over 800 colonies by 2490. We had been in space for almost 100 years by then, and we still had yet to make any contact with another sentient species. Until 2525.

That year, we made contact with a union of several alien species, those that you saw in the vid, and a few others, that called themselves the Covenant. We attempted first contact. They shot our ships down and burned one of our colonies." More gasps. "And when I say burned, I mean burned to a cinder, burned so bad large portions of the surface were turned to glass. At that time, the UNSC didn't have shields or anything of that nature. We were using ballistic weaponry, massive slugs magnetically launched at high speeds and swarms of missiles. The Covenant had shields, and plasma weaponry, capable of burning through the toughest armor plates on our ships in three seconds. Using that same plasma weaponry, they were capable of 'glassing' our colonies through orbital bombardment. In space, we never stood a chance.

I found out later what was driving the Covenant on their genocide of the human race. They were primarily motivated by a religion that said that an ancient species called the Forerunners, long extinct, left behind artifacts of transcendence, that when activated, would send all those who believe on a 'Great Journey' to godhood. The species in charge of the Covenant, the Prophets, believed that the gods chose them to lead their followers to godhood. There was just one problem in that view. They had found out from an ancient machine left behind by the Forerunners that humans were their chosen inheritors, not the Prophets. The three High Prophets, Truth, Mercy, and Regret, decided to keep this information from everyone else and declare humanity to be sin incarnate in an attempt to hold on to their power.

And so, nearly thirty years of war followed. Humanity was on the defensive the entire time, going up against a by far technologically superior foe. We were able to almost hold them on the ground, we were roughly evenly matched. This was mostly through the efforts of the best of the best, the Spartans. Stronger, faster, tougher, possibly smarter, and certainly better protected than anyone else on the battlefield, they were what saved us on the ground. They were thrown at impossible situations, and always came out on top. Did I mention that there were about thirty of them? If we had more, we might have been able to turn the tide, to stop them, but that was all we had. Not that the victories on the ground mattered much.

No matter what we did, we were always outmatched by the Covenant in space. Usually, if we were able to hold them, or push them back on the ground, they would abandon their objective, probably something about obtaining the 'holy relics' they could detect from their ships that they thought we were destroying, 'holy relics' that they didn't realize they were murdering by the platoon, by the city. They would cut their losses, retreat to their ships, and just glass the planet, killing anyone left on it. It went on like that for years, them hunting down our colonies and burning them to a crisp, no matter what we did to stop them. Until they found our last major military outpost aside from Earth, the planet Reach. The fighting on the ground went on for months, with far off fleets arriving in system as fast as they could to try to beat off the Covenant. In the end, there was nothing we could do. Reach fell, and many ships were destroyed. I managed to escape the planet on one of the last ships to leave."

Shepard decided to interrupt right as I was nearing the climax of my tale. "If the odds were that low, and the enemy that superior, why didn't you just give up?"

"There was no giving up, no surrender. That just meant that we would die then instead of the small hope that we could fight them off. The Covenant took no prisoners, accepted no surrender. They butchered everyone, military and civilians alike. We could only fight.

Anyway, that ship, the Pillar of Autumn, carried one of the last hopes of humanity. One of the last remaining Spartans, most of the others having fallen in battle, was on that ship. He was a living legend, the absolute best of the best. No, it wasn't me, I wasn't a Spartan back then. Almost nobody knew his real name, they just called him by his rank, or his number. Master Chief, Spartan 117. While fleeing the destruction of Reach, we went on a random slipspace jump, part of protocol in an attempt to delay the discovery of Earth and the remaining colonies. We came out of slipspace in a system, with an entire armada of Covenant ships seemingly waiting for us. We found out what they were really there for though, one of the artifacts the Forerunners left behind, one of the ones that would bring along transcendence to all who believed. A massive artificial ringworld the Covenant called Halo. The ship, already damaged from the battle over Reach, was boarded by Covenant forces and damaged further, forcing it to crash land on Halo. Most of the crew and soldiers escaped through the lifeboats, but my crew and I weren't most soldiers. We geared up, and got down onto the battlefield our normal way. Feet first. Launched from a ship in low orbit in what could very well become your coffin.

When we regrouped back on the ground, we discovered two things. One, the Master Chief had also made it off the Autumn. Two, the Captain of the ship, Captain Jacob Keyes, had been captured by the Covenant. So some other soldiers and I met up with the Chief, who had the ship's AI-"

Tali suddenly cut me off as soon as she heard AI. "You people uses AIs!?"

"Yes, we do. Without them, we wouldn't have lasted as long against the Covenant as we did. And that particular AI was the one who stopped the Chief and me from accidentally killing us all."

Shepard broke in there. "What was that?"

"I'll get there in a second. So we met up with the Chief and Cortana, that was her, the AI's, name," Tali was still glaring at me through the visor of her helmet. I had no idea why, "and we stormed the ship where they were keeping Keyes. We rescued him and got him out of there, and gave us a new objective. Find the control room of Halo before the Covenant. He figured that if the Covenant wanted it, that was reason enough to keep the, from having it. So we went off to find the Silent Cartographer, the map machine of the Halo. We found it, and got as close as we could to the control room from the air, then fought our way there through hordes of Covenant. When we got to the control room, Chief plugged in Cortana so she could try to get some intel from the ring's computer systems. It was about a minute later that she sent us to hurry after the Captain to make sure that he didn't do whatever it was that he was about to do. So we flew off to a bunker in the middle of a swamp, and fought through very light Covenant resistance to the entrance, and made our way inside to find Keyes. Aside from the Covenant near the entrance, the entire bunker was empty, except for one severely traumatized soldier who tried to shoot us and wouldn't stop babbling what we thought was nonsense. Eventually we made our way to a room with a dead marine just inside the door. Chief took a look at the man's helmet logs from the recorder, and we found that we were too late. The Captain had already come in, and his team was ambushed by something, in the same room we were standing in. The video showed most of the soldiers die, but aside from the dead marine and one lone helmet that we took the logs from, the room was empty. No bodies, no nothing. Then, just as we were about to leave, they came back. The things that 'killed' the Captain and his troops. The monster the Covenant woke, the monster the Captain unleashed. I still have nightmares about them, about that room. I'm pretty sure the Chief does too, even if he won't admit it. We fought our way out of that bunker, and while we were trying to fight them off for evac, some robots came and helped us fight them off. A Forerunner AI came too, and told us that it needed our help to get rid of the Flood, the monsters.

The Forerunner AI, 343 Guilty Spark, the Monitor of the ring, took us to a place he called the Library, a place that was crawling with Flood. He told us we had to fight our way through the Flood and find something he called the Index, which would allow us to activate Halo, which was really a weapon against the Flood. Along the way, we discovered that Spark was not exactly ... sane. Anyway, once we got the Index, he teleported us back to the control room. When we went to activate the ring, Cortana popped up and stopped the activation."

I heard Tali mutter under her breath, "I knew it."

"She then told us exactly how Halo stops the Flood, an answer that we never got from Spark. Halo was not a weapon aimed at the Flood, it was a weapon aimed at it's food source. Any sentient species would be wiped out, as the ring, and the six others in the array, fired. The Forerunners had created it as a weapon of last resort against the Flood, an enemy that they couldn't defeat. So, in an attempt to save what they could from the Flood, they sacrificed themselves and fired the array. That was over a hundred thousand years ago."

That stopped everyone dead in their tracks, even Wrex.

"When we realized that Halo wasn't a weapon against the Flood, that it was a gun pointed at the head of the galaxy, we decided we needed to find another way to stop the Flood. Spark disagreed. Violently. We grabbed Cortana, and made our way out of their, fighting the Covenant, the Flood, and Spark's Sentinels. We managed to delay Spark along the way, and teleported to where the Captain was, so we could get his neural implant to get the access codes to blow the Autumn's reactors, destroying the ring. We found the Captain partially absorbed by the Flood, being 'interrogated' for the location of more 'food'. We got the codes and made our way to the ship, where we set the reactors to catastrophically meltdown, destroying the ring. We managed to escape in a fighter, pick up the last human survivors, one of which was a Spartan cryogenically frozen due to critical injuries, and hijack a Covenant ship, picking up the last survivors on Reach thanks to a marginally time bending Forerunner artifact, and eventually make our way back to Earth, our last major stronghold, one armed to the teeth.

Then, a Covenant fleet found Earth. It had passed several remaining colonies to get there, and it was fairly small, obviously not expecting much combat. We found out later that it followed Forerunner coordinates to get there, and they didn't expect us to be on the planet that their gods left a priceless artifact on. We managed to drive the fleet off and have some ships follow them through slipspace, and we arrived at another Halo. We arrived, and we fought our way through the forces on the ground to get to one of their leaders, Regret, who led the attack on Earth. Chief managed to kill him, before we were both captured by the Gravemind, the leader of the Flood. It had also captured a high ranking Elite, known as the Arbiter, and convinced him that the 'Great Journey' was a lie, and of the Halo Array's true purpose. This was happening at the same time that an internal revolution was going in on the Covenant, with the Prophets tossing aside the Elites in favor of the Brutes. The Elites, feeling betrayal from the Prophets from both their actions and the lie of the 'Great Journey', rebelled and allied with us to fight the Covenant. The Gravemind offered a temporary truce between the Elites and Humans and the Flood to stop the ring from firing and killing everyone. Master Chief went to High Charity, the Covenant's floating spaceship of a capital, kind of like a larger, more mobile Citadel, and stop the remaining Prophets. The Arbiter and I were sent to the Library to try to find the Index before the Covenant could get it to fire the ring. One Prophet managed to escape High Charity, which the Gravemind was infecting with Flood, and the Chief was able to hitch a ride back to Earth. While this was going on, the Arbiter and I found that we were too late, and that the Brute leader had taken both the Index and the Commander of the ship we came in on to the control room. We followed him in an armored assault platform, and just barely managed to stop him in time. As it was, he managed to put all the rings on standby, ready to fire at a moment's notice. That was how close we were. Somehow we managed to get back to Earth before the Chief, just after the last Prophet's fleet bypassed what was left of the defenses and started digging for something.

We met up with the Chief again and tried to stop Truth, the Prophet, before he could find what he was looking for. We thought it was the Ark, a Forerunner device that would be able to remotely activate all the Halos, but we got lucky. Turns out it was just a portal to the Ark. We gathered our fleets, and just before we were able to follow Truth, a Flood infested ship crashed on Earth. We had to glass part of Africa to stop the infestation."

Garrus was the one who interrupted me this time. "Was the truly necessary? Reducing part of your homeworld to glass to stop one ship?"

"You don't understand how dangerous the Flood was. One single spore could destroy an entire species, possibly even all civilization like what happened to the Forerunners if you're not careful. Best to err on the side of caution, rather than doom your species, right?

We followed Truth to the Ark, but the Flood had followed both of us through as well. The Flood once again proposed a temporary alliance to stop Truth from activations the rings, something we barely managed to do, and even so, our Commander ended up dead. And even then, we still had to find a way to stop the Flood. Fortunately, on the Ark, there was an unfinished Halo ring being built as a replacement for the one that we destroyed, still unconnected to the array. We needed to find a way to activate it to kill the Flood, and the Chief had a plan. Back when he was escaping High Charity, he had left Cortana behind to try to stop the rings from firing. The Gravemind had brought High Charity to the Ark as it's base of operations. Chief went in to rescue Cortana from the Gravemind. We were still in luck. Cortana still had the Index from the first Halo, the one that we destroyed. We went to the ring and fought our way through the Flood to the control room, to try to fire the ring, as all the Flood were on either the ring or the Ark, and the Ark was way outside the galaxy. There would be no collateral damage. We got to the control room, and we prepared to fire the ring. However, Spark, who had survived the first ring and had helped us out on the second one, disagreed with us once again. The ring would shake itself apart as it fired, destroying it again. He wanted us to wait, and we didn't have the time to wait. Spark managed to kill Sargent Johnson, who had been with the Chief and I since the beginning, back on the first Halo. It took a massive amount of firepower, but we managed to bring Spark down. We activated the ring, and made our way back to the only ship left on this side of the portal, the Forward unto Dawn. With the ring collapsing around us, ready to fire, we barely made it. The Arbiter, who had been with us since the second Halo, and I made our way to the front end of the ship to bring us back to Earth. Only problem is, something went wrong. The portal seemed to collapse in on itself, and only the front half of the Dawn made it through. Master Chief and Cortana were stuck drifting in space for years while the Arbiter and I crashed down on Earth. The war ended not long after that."

Shepard seemed stunned, not to mention the rest of them. "That was a truly interesting tale. I certainly make like our First Contact War look like a small skirmish compared to yours. One last question. How many did you lose?"

I thought about this for a second. "No one really knows. Whether its inability, or fear, to count the bodies, no one has done it. All I really know is that we went from over 800 colonies to maybe a couple dozen, most small. We lost billions in the war. It's not something I want to do again."

She nodded. "Fair enough. What we're trying to do here is stop a similar fate. I know you already said you'll help, but I need to make sure."

I nodded. "I'm in. You can count on me, ma'am."

"Good. Just so you know, we're on our way back to the Citadel for supplies. We could probably pick up an onmitool for you there, as well as any other supplies you might need. All of you, dismissed."

And with that, the meeting was over. We all filed out and headed back to our own little corners of the ship. I headed back down to the bay and back to my little stack of crates, and started reading some more.

Well, sorry that took so long. I would say that it was because of the extraordinarily long chapter, almost double the lenght of the previous record holder, but thats not it. I just happen to have the right blend of lazyness and forgetfulness that sometimes makes it hard to get things done. Anyways, to help make up for it, I've given you this double length chapter, even if most of it is just a recap of the original Halo trilogy. I've also gotten you not one, not three, but two new polls, as well as the results from the previous poll. Seems you guys want Shepard to wait. Understandable. The selection is a bit limited right now. Though romancing Liara did come in a very close second. One vote behind in fact. You guys must hate Kaiden. Anyways, on to the new votes!

Vote #3: Morality

I'm going to probably try something new, and my original plan of asking you guys to vote at every major choice isn't going to fit into that. So, how would you guys like Shepard to act?

Vote closed.

Vote #4: Chapters

Like i said, i want to try something new. I figured I'd run it by you first. What I'm proposing is kind of like what just happened. I write as much as i can for a month, then upload what I've got at the end of the month, maybe splitting it off into several chapters if i have a lot. This will result in longer chapters, but also longer waiting time between uploads. Or I could continue what I have been doing, and upload a chapter, usually shorter, probably only part of a main mission, when I finish it. Shorter wait, but a shorter ride. Either way, I'm going to try the new method for next month, see how it works. Your vote will kick in after that.

Vote closed.

Don'te afraid to vote. I like your input. It keeps me from having to make these decisions myself. Anyways, happy reading, vote, and Happy Easter (if you celebrate it).