The UNSC Point of No Return was a contradiction wrapped in shadow. Technically it was a Prowler class vessel—a stealth ship in common parlance. However, it had one feature that was immediately obvious to anyone who got a good look at it: it was large. Massive, even, as far as stealth ships went. It was common knowledge that the larger a starship was the more difficult it was to conceal. As such, nearly all Prowlers in the United Nations Space Command, the UNSC, the military wing of the United Earth Government, or UEG, were rather small vessels, comparative in size to a corvette. This limited the size of the weaponry and overall punch that Prowlers could bring to bear and thus they were nearly always used for scouting and monitoring purposes. The Point of No Return, by contrast, was the size of a destroyer and it had the firepower to match. It was a sledgehammer acting as an assassin's blade.
It was also the headquarters of the UNSC's intelligence branch, the Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI.
Not that Major Caroline Ackerson had time to dwell on such poetics. Not when she was delivering what could be either very good or very bad news to some of the most powerful, and most ruthless, people in all of the UNSC.
She walked up to the briefing room in the depths of the Point of No Return and waited with impatience for the mandatory security screening to be completed. Even in the heart of their sanctuary the leaders of ONI insisted on maximum security. Thankfully the guard did not insist on a pat down. She doubted she would have been able to restrain herself from inflicting physical harm upon him had he attempted something so invasive and humiliating, his assault rifle be damned.
At last the scans were completed and Ackerson was allowed to enter. She was greeted not by a conference table in the center of a normal briefing room, but rather by a poorly lit chamber with a small space for her to stand in front of what were clearly several occupied desks. She walked to the vacant space and blinked as a light suddenly illuminated her from above. Strangely, the light gave no aid in her attempt to discern the identities of who she was addressing.
"Major Ackerson. Report."
Only one individual spoke, using a steady, calm, and almost inaudible voice. Despite this it carried a palpable sense of power and threat. Combined with the fact that the voice was clearly female it gave the young major a horrible feeling that she knew exactly who she was talking to.
Caroline Ackerson resisted the urge to swallow the lump in her throat and proceeded to present her report.
"Another colony has been hit, name of 'Hadley's Hope.' Same MO as before: Seismic disruption, beginning small but growing to about 8 on the Richter Scale, followed by a near-planet wide EMP pulse, and finally a destructive event leaving a kilometer wide crater in the ground. Any electronics not encased in a Faraday Cage or the new shielding tech was instantly fried by the EMP."
"Hadley's Hope had a UNSC military outpost, correct? Did any monitoring gear survive?"
"Yes, ma'am," Ackerson responded, her unease overwhelming her tendency to be annoyed at being interrupted. "In fact, they gave us the most substantial evidence we have so far gathered about what exactly is happening. It seems like a Scenario Beta-3-11."
A Beta-3-11 was among the most serious threats that the UNSC had a category for. It referred to a cataclysmic threat resulting from the discovery or activation of Forerunner technology. The Forerunner's were among the most significant alien races in galactic history. Nearly all advanced sapient civilizations, humanity being an exception, had reverse-engineered their technology from the equipment left behind by that long dead civilization. Humanity had had several major encounters with Forerunner tech, specifically Forerunner super-weapons, in the past decade. Each instance had resulted in the death of at least thousands, the most recent one claiming over 60 million civilian lives in the destruction of New Phoenix.
"You mean it wasn't the Covenant?"
"It was not, ma'am," the Major replied. The Covenant was a hierarchical caste-based theocracy of non-human sapients who, 33 years before, had declared total war on the human race. It was the first contact humanity had ever had with aliens and the resulting Human-Covenant War had lasted for nearly 30 years. The Covenant had massacred tens of billions of human beings, reducing entire colony worlds to molten glass in its crusade to rid the galaxy of a species their prophets had dubbed an affront to their gods. The war had finally ended only five years ago with the Treaty of 2553, which marked the dissolution of the Covenant following its civil war, known amongst the now-former Covenant races as "The Great Schism." The Covenant that the Voice now referred to was a new organization that sought to restore the glory of the old order and had dubbed itself the "Storm Covenant," although in the Major's opinion they had quite a long way to achieving its lofty and genocidal goals. Frankly, she was rather surprised that ONI Command even thought that they were capable of attacks like this.
"Do we have video?"
"Yes, ma'am. It should be on the data cube I handed to the guard on the way in." The Major waited as the Voice watched the video that the guard had transmitted once an ONI Artificial Intelligence had scanned it for malicious software. At least, she presumed the other individuals in the room were watching it, since they didn't deign to inform her and simply allowed the silence to stretch on.
A shiver threatened to crawl up Caroline's spine as she recalled what the marine outpost's cameras had recorded. She stamped it down, making sure to give no external sign of her discomfort.
"Continue," the Voice said without preamble.
Major Ackerson complied. "It seems that the reports from civilian survivors were indeed accurate. We are unclear what, exactly, these devices are, but their design is unmistakably Forerunner. Combine that with its apparent immunity to the UNSC base's more advanced scanning equipment, and all doubt vanishes."
"So we have nothing else?" the Voice demanded.
"Actually, no," the Major responded, hesitantly. She was unsure how the next part of her report would go over. "We unexpectedly gained a new source on these...things. A small amount of data on them was transmitted to us from within the Storm Covenant. Our techs believe that the message's signed author is genuine: Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey-"
"WHAT?!"
Major Ackerson actually jumped slightly at the outburst and sudden emotion from the Voice. Almost too thrown to continue, she elaborated, "Y-yes, ma'am. As you know, she has been in Covenant custody since her capture 6 months ago and she appears to have gained knowledge of whatever is causing these events. She refers to them as 'Guardians,' and she claims to-"
"I am uninterested in what that traitor claims! Did we gain any additional intelligence about Halsey in this message?"
"Yes, actually," the Major replied, "she transmitted the location she can be found one week from today. It's a human colony, Conrad's Point. She claims to want to come in and assist in dealing with this threat. Given her pedigree, and our lack of other sources on these 'Guardians,' I think-"
"Perhaps you did not hear me, Major. Nothing, I repeat, nothing, that woman has to say interests me."
"But ma'am," Major Ackerson replied, her heart pounding at her own audacity in contradicting whoever she was speaking to. If she displeased the ranking officers of ONI, she would be lucky to get a broken career. If she was unlucky, she would experience an unfortunate "accident" or reassignment to a hostile region of space. If she was very unlucky, she would be sent to a "Midnight Facility," a deep, dark hole where ONI threw all the undesirable elements of society that it didn't want to simply dispose of. Just the thought of winding up in one of those iso gulags...
Still, she pressed on. If this lead panned out and she got credit for solving this crisis, her ascent through the ranks of ONI would be assured. She longed to surpass the legacy of her late and unlamented father.
"Given the potential intelligence and analysis Dr. Halsey could provide, and the fact that our psychological analysts believe she is genuine in her desire to return to her own species, surely it would benefit us to-"
"The only benefit this message has given us is in providing a target location. Dr. Halsey is a rogue asset, Major. She has proven multiple times over the past decade that she is unwilling to follow orders or ONI policy. Given her intellect and her decades of experience on the inside of this organization, she herself is an Alpha level threat. She is to be eliminated. Immediately."
Major Ackerson sighed internally and let her opportunity slip through her fingers. "Yes, ma'am. Understood, ma'am. I'll put our best agent on it."
"See that you do." The Voice paused at this, perhaps to collect itself. "Don't worry about these so-called 'Guardians,' Major. The Covenant themselves couldn't stand against the might of this organization. We will meet this threat and conquer it ourselves. And we will do it as we have always done."
"From the shadows."
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"Evasive maneuvers!" the pilot of the Pelican dropship shouted, immediately before a ball of superheated plasma reduced him, his aircraft, and the twenty marines inside it to a fireball in the sky above the colony world Conrad's Point. The Master Chief immediately banked his own Pelican, nimbly avoiding the incoming anti-aircraft fire with the benefit of his augmented reflexes.
The destruction of Pelican Echo-420 meant that his group of four Spartans would be the only UNSC soldiers to reach the surface alive. Inconvenient, but the Spartan had faced worse odds. He suppressed a pang of loss as he suddenly remembered that Cortana would not be there to help him. She would not be hacking into enemy communications or finding alternative means to accomplish his mission. She would never again provide him invaluable intelligence while annoyingly trying to amuse him with witty banter. The Master Chief focused on his piloting.
"Blue Lead to squad. Approaching LZ. ETA 90 seconds," he commed the rest of his team. Three acknowledgments answered him from the crew compartment. His team was ready, as he knew it would be.
The Master Chief tilted his dropship until it was almost perpendicular to the ground and accelerated past Mach 3. He focused his mind until time seemed to slow around him; his ability to perceive and react to the world around him increased to be exponentially higher than that of any unaugmented human. He and his siblings had given it the nickname "Spartan time," and it allowed them to move with a speed and precision unrivaled in all of the galaxy. He put it to good use, dodging incoming fire and waiting until the last possible fraction of a second before pulling up on the flight stick, leveling out, and flying his dropship into a series of canyons. Hopefully his speed and the unearthly vast network of rents in the planet's crust would delay any effort to locate them. He eventually slowed to the point where he could land without leaving a massive impact crater. He landed the Pelican at the designated LZ, well within enemy lines, and shut the aircraft down.
"Blue Team, we have made landfall," he commed.
"Hey, you managed not to crash this time, sir! And the whiplash from that maneuver of yours only knocked a few of my teeth out. You're improving, Blue Lead!" Blue One quipped.
The Master Chief frowned. While Blue Team was more of a family than a traditional squad or fireteam, Fred was coming dangerously close to insubordination. Then again, Fred technically outranked him, being a Commander while John was still a Master Chief Petty Officer. In fact, Fred had commanded Blue Team while the Chief had been stuck stranded on the derelict Forward Unto Dawn. The higher ranking Spartan simply deferred to him because John had been the leader of the Spartans from the beginning. He supposed that Blue Team was rather unconventional in many ways, so decided to let his sibling's new fondness for jests slide.
Normally he would not be flying his own ship, but recently he had taken to honing his diverse skills and doing more tasks himself. He couldn't quite explain why but ever since returning to active service he had felt increasingly constrained, and decided that the best way to deal with it was to focus on the more neglected of his skillsets. Of course, his squadmates used the opportunity to needle their stoic leader as only his siblings would dare.
He opened the cockpit door and examined his team.
Blue One, Fred. His second in command. He was armed with a Designated Marksman Rifle and a custom made energy blade based on the energy swords of the Sangheili warrior species. It could cut through an inch thick plate of titanium-A and could be adjusted to any length between 18 and 100 cm with a simple adjustment on the hilt. It was a rather expensive piece of gear, but given Fred's skill with melee combat the Master Chief knew that it was worth more than a full set of MJOLNIR armor in terms of sheer effectiveness.
Fred had been surprisingly willing to cede command back to the Chief following his return to active service. The Chief supposed that Fred was just glad another of his brothers had survived the war and wanted to hang on to the way things used to be. With Blue Team being composed of the only four survivors of the Spartan II program, it was a feeling they all certainly shared.
Blue Two, Linda. His sniper. She was, as always, armed with her custom SR-99 Anti-Materiel, nicknamed "Nornfang." Technically the weapon was outdated compared to the newer SR-99 Series 5, but Linda had made a number of modifications to her rifle that made it far more advanced than the standard model. That combined with her decades of experience with it made it the most effective sniper rifle he could have possibly equipped her with. Her helmet was covered in additional optical gear, ensuring that even without the rifle she would be endowed with a level of accuracy and precision never before known amongst mortal kind.
Linda nodded at him so deeply it was practically a bow. The Master Chief had noticed that Linda's respect for and loyalty to him had increased greatly over lately. Like Fred, Linda had once commanded her own team, but unlike him all of the members of her team had died in the last days of the Human-Covenant War. The Chief had also personally saved her life after she had been mortally wounded in the Battle of Reach. Kelly had suggested that he had become a source of stability and acceptance for her since his return and was beginning to worry that her devotion to him might be straying into the realm of fanaticism.
Finally there was Blue Three, Kelly. She was the fastest Spartan ever produced and had always been the best scout of all of them. She could easily keep pace with a Warthog LRV, and was almost supernaturally good at avoiding detection, even for a special operations group like Blue Team. She carried a shotgun and had a fondness for closing the distance between herself and her targets in the blink of an eye; effective range was not an issue for her.
Kelly also nodded at him, but her body language betrayed more concern than his other siblings. Spartans were typically people of few words and Kelly was likewise rather quiet by most people's standards. For a Spartan, however, she was rather sociable and was the one he relied upon for the more human and emotional support the team sometimes needed. Unfortunately it had recently been causing him trouble, as she insisted he was pushing himself too hard with his recent string of back-to-back missions. She seemed to think he was attempting to lose himself in his work. The Chief had been meaning to talk to her about it, but was having difficulty figuring out what to say. He mentally shook himself—it would not do to shake his head and signal that something was wrong—and refocused on the mission.
He quickly grabbed his trusty MA5C Asssault Rifle and Jackhammer rocket launcher and gave the order.
"Move out, Blue Team."
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They made their way through the alien forest of Conrad's Point. Tree branches shaped like reptilian tails, covered in fine cilia, brushed against their armor as they moved. Despite this, and their half-ton weight, the Spartans were silent as a whisper in a storm as they jogged over the forested plateau towards their objective. They could hear the sounds of battle coming from several kilometers away. Just by looking up they could see the flashes in the sky as the human and alien fleets battled in the space surrounding the UEG colony world.
Their mission was simple. The leader of the Storm Covenant, a renegade faction of Sangheili looking to restore the religious order that had been bent on the extermination of the human species, had brought a sizable force to Conrad's Point. His name was Jul 'Mdama, and he was their objective. They would kill the so-called prophet and military leader and thus cut the head off of the proverbial snake.
The Sangheili's mission on Conrad's Point was not yet known. Strangely they had been ordered not to pursue any potential leads or secondary objectives and instead focus solely on the elimination of 'Mdama. It didn't sit well with the Master Chief and he suspected that ONI, the very organization that had created the Spartan II program, was hiding something from them.
The Master Chief frowned again beneath his helmet. Any one scrap of intel could mean the difference between life and death. It was something that had been drilled into him during his training. He didn't like the fact that Command was getting on his nerves more often than not in recent days.
"Hostile patrol ahead," Kelly warned over the comms. The other Spartans immediately crouched behind cover and eyed the motion trackers displayed on the interior of their helmets.
The Master Chief snaked a fiber optic probe around his cover and spotted a small Covenant patrol approaching. It was composed of a single Sangheili leading a group of six Unggoy. The nearly three meter tall saurian warrior towered over its meter tall subordinates, one of whom it shoved forward with contempt. The Sangheili were a proud, militant society and many of its members had little to no respect for the often cowardly Unggoy. In fact the only reason they even employed them was because the old Covenant had enslaved the diminutive species and used them as cannon fodder in their endless wars of conquest and forced conversion.
Blue Team waited until the patrol had passed by to slip further along the way toward their objective. They soon approached what intelligence pegged as the probable location of 'Mdama: a mine.
The complex itself was fairly simple on the surface. There was an administrative building, several garages for the equipment, large industrial and transport vehicles, and storage areas for the ore transported from the depths of the mine itself. However, the Chief noticed several other buildings that didn't seem to fit. They were nondescript, square structures, obviously prefabricated; the kind of building you could see on colonies across the breadth of human space. However, they were new, and obviously not of the same make as the others. Most importantly, they were swarming with Storm.
The Storm Covenant had stuck to SOP, setting up numerous fortifications. The complex was surrounded by portable guard "towers," small platforms 3 meter across held aloft ten meters in the air by an anti-gravity lift. Each contained a Kig-Yar sharpshooter. The hunched, one and a half meter tall avian sapients were notorious for their excellent eyesight and crack marksmanship. Of course, they could only hit what they could see. All entrances were blocked off by barricades made of portable energy shields tall enough to cover a standing Sangheili. Beyond it all was the entrance to the mine, which was guarded by its own guard towers and energy shield barricades.
The majority of the security seemed focused not on the mine itself, but on one of the mystery buildings on the surface. It had all of the security measures the mine entrance had in addition to two full squads of black armored Sangheili spec ops and a pair of Wraith tanks. The Master Chief shook his head. 'Mdama was either very paranoid about his own survival, or there was something very important in that building that he was after. If 'Mdama was anywhere, he would be there.
Lastly, Chief noted the large, open area serving as an airfield where three Phantom dropships were resting. At all costs 'Mdama could not be allowed to reach them and escape.
The Master Chief quickly formulated a plan of attack. "Blue Two, take one of those towers and eliminate the remaining sharpshooters on my signal. Don't be spotted. Blue Three, take my Jackhammer," he said, handing Kelly his rocket launcher, "go to the ridge to the west and disable those Wraiths as soon as I give Linda the go ahead. Blue One, you and I will infiltrate the airfield and disable the transports. After they're out of the picture Blue One, Three, and I will close on the Command Center under cover of Two's sniper fire. We breach it, eliminate all targets, locate 'Mdama and take him down. Clear?"
"Copy," they responded as one.
He was about to order the others to execute his plan when another Phantom dropship flew into view, flanked by no less than four Banshee gunships. The Master Chief paused, waiting to see what it was delivering. Perhaps 'Mdama was only just arriving.
After nearly three decades of war across light-years of space, fought against a military juggernaut composed of the first sapient alien life humanity had ever encountered, there was very little that could still shock the Master Chief. The person that exited that dropship made his jaw drop almost to the bottom of his helmet.
Dr. Catherine Halsey.
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"John?"
John-117 did not need to turn around or even recognize the voice to know who was talking to him. It could only be Dr. Halsey. She was the only one beside his fellow Spartan cadets to use his name. Chief Petty Officer Mendez and the other instructors referred to him as "cadet" or simply "117."
"Yes ma'am," he replied, immediately turning around and standing at attention.
"Please John, there is no need for military honorifics with me. You can call me 'Catherine,' or, if you insist on protocol, 'Dr. Halsey,' or even just 'Doctor,'" she replied with a smile.
"Yes, Dr. Halsey," John said, frowning internally. The good doctor's casual nature of talking with him and his fellow cadets had always been rather uncomfortable. After all, he was only ten, and even before he was conscripted at age six it would have been unthinkable to address an adult by her first name. Now that he was training to be a soldier such a thing was thoroughly taboo for him.
Dr. Halsey sighed, apparently amused at his discomfort.
"Please come with me," she said, and without another word started walking away. John followed her through the ONI training complex until they came to her office. After he had entered she closed the door and moved behind her desk, tapping on some device he couldn't see. "Please have a seat," she said, not looking up from her task. He sat down and Dr. Halsey, after finishing whatever she was working on, sat not behind her desk as he expected, but in a chair she placed right in front of his. "I wanted to talk to you about the recent assignment you and the other cadets completed. The one in your advanced military strategy class," she said.
"Yes ma—er, Dr. Halsey. Was my response inadequate?" 117 asked. He was unhappy with the thought of performing inadequately. He didn't want to disappoint her. He also didn't like to lose.
"Not at all," she replied, "at least, not by the standards of most UNSC officers. However, I think that you displayed a limited perspective."
To say that this threw John off balance would be a massive understatement. The answer he gave was sufficient for the officers of the United Nations Space Command, but was still somehow inadequate? How could that possibly be? If it had been anyone else who had said such a thing John would have dismissed it and immediately lost a good deal of respect for the person in question. But this was Dr. Halsey. While his interactions with her were rather limited, it was clear to anyone that she was a brilliant mind. It was also she who came up with the idea of the Spartan program and her mastery over multiple fields of science was clear from the times she gave educational lectures in place of their normal AI instructor, Deja. Every time they met John felt that he had been made far wiser for her instruction.
"I don't understand, Dr. Halsey. How was it inadequate?" he tentatively asked.
"If you recall, the question concerned dealing with an Outer Colony about to be attacked by a strong Insurrectionist force in the event of a civil war. Do you remember how you responded?" she asked, although John couldn't help but feel like it was more a demand than a question. His discomfort increased significantly.
"Of course, ma-Doctor. I recommended pulling all UNSC forces off of the world and using them to fortify neighboring systems. With the amount of resources provided in the assignment prompt, I determined that it was unfeasible to defend the world without taking unacceptable losses," he said. "Doctor," he added swiftly, feeling that in the absence of the usual "ma'am" he needed to apply some honorific just then.
"A perfectly logical answer. Text book, some would say," Dr. Halsey said before pulling out her data pad. "I want you to look at these pictures, and imagine they are of the world in the assignment."
John looked at the data pad, studying the various images as they passed by. They were all highly sentimental in nature. Families, schools, workers of various professions, sporting events, etc.
"I do not deny that sometimes the logic you employed is the type that must be followed for the greater good. In fact, I fear that it is logic you yourself will have to follow far more often than I would like," at this the Doctor paused and an expression John couldn't quite identify, but looked distinctly negative, passed over her face before immediately vanishing. "However, I want you to remember these images. Remember that it is for people like this, worlds like this, that you fight. Spartans are to be the protectors of humankind and while the cold calculus you employed may sometimes be needed you must remember, if a decision falls to you, that it must always be considered a last resort. People are more than numbers...You are more than a number. Do you understand, John?"
John-117 frowned for a moment. "I think I do, Doctor."
She examined him for a moment and then nodded, seemingly satisfied. "Think on it some more," she said before getting up and finally moving behind her desk. "Now, let's go over your military history scores." John brightened considerably at that, knowing that he had scored highly on all of the recent exams.
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John looked on in disbelief as the Sangheili escorted Dr. Halsey toward the command center. He had known that the Storm Covenant had captured her some time ago. In fact he had volunteered to lead a rescue op several times only to be rejected. Command said they just didn't have a firm enough location on her and Blue Team was needed elsewhere. It was a point that continued to bother the Master Chief. This woman had been a significant figure in his development. Other than CPO Mendez himself there had not been a single person who had had as much of an impact on him as Dr. Catherine Halsey. Every time they spoke she had helped him advance in his development in countless ways; she had always challenged him and he had reveled in surmounting whatever trials she had presented him. More than that, though, she was a woman who had shown considerable concern for him over the years. She was the closest thing to a mother he had had since his conscription.
Supposedly, Dr. Halsey was now working for the Storm Covenant rather than being a simple prisoner. The Master Chief didn't believe that nonsense for a second. Halsey was no traitor. Most likely she was playing along, maybe even feeding them false intelligence. Regardless, her presence here was most unexpected.
He was sorely tempted to abandon his primary objective and stage a rescue operation on the spot. However, his orders were clear: eliminate Jul 'Mdama at any cost. The Master Chief felt an unexpected spike of rage as he suddenly understood why Command had been so secretive. They knew. They knew she would be here. Maybe they didn't expect her to be moved to this exact location, but they must have known she would be on this planet. Why else would they have been so insistent on keeping him in the dark? It wasn't like it was back in the Human-Covenant War, when the Covenant's activities were still shrouded in mystery. They had long ago figured out how to access alien communications networks and the information they had accumulated on the extraterrestrial races of the galaxy was immense and growing every day. They must have known...
The Master Chief forced himself to stay calm. Command must have had its reasons. Surely they had another team in the field tasked with rescuing Dr. Halsey. He stamped down the urge to try to contact Command and request clearance to liaise with the rescue team. The Storm would certainly detect any attempted transmission he had made.
"Orders, sir?" Blue One asked. The Chief knew that the same thoughts had to be going through the rest of Blue Team.
Taking a deep breath, the Master Chief responded, "We stick to the plan. Priority is the elimination of Jul 'Mdama."
"Sir, we can't just-" Blue Three began to object, before John interrupted her.
"But Dr. Halsey is an Alpha level asset. Recovery of the Doctor is now a secondary mission objective." This was stretching his battlefield autonomy to the limit. Command had made it clear that there were to be no secondary mission objectives. But he couldn't just leave her, or let her die through his actions. He couldn't. He wouldn't.
He also couldn't afford to wait and hope the rescue team showed up and contacted him. They could be on the other side of the planet for all he knew and both targets could have left the premises by the time they arrived. It was up to Blue Team. And Blue Team never failed.
So, yeah, let me know what you think. This is my first multi-chapter fic and I'd appreciate any feedback.
Note: Yes, I'm deviating a bit from the canon characterization of Blue Team. I haven't read all the recent stuff but I'm pretty sure Fred has never been a joker. Don't worry, I'm not turning him into comic relief. It's just that the Spartan IIs have been at war for decades now and they lost most of their siblings just a few years past. I'm trying to find ways for their characterizations to demonstrate that and I figured having one of them turn to humor would be a good start. Plus, it's not like Spartans were ever entirely stick-in-the-muds. Even John liked a good quip every now and then, right?
Note: Kelly's shotgun. Yes, I know that IRL shotguns do not have an effective range of about 12 feet and I'll try to keep their limits in this fic reasonable. I just figured that the weapon loadout of each Spartan should reflect their individual skillsets or personalities, hence Fred's energy blade. Also the possibility of lightsaber duels. Fred vs. Warden Eternal, anyone?