A/N: Only twenty or so people are reading this, but I do feel that abandoning it would be cruel, unless someone else wanted to pick it up. This chapter is just a short segue. I don't think that there are any explosions at all. The reason that it took so long is because I was on vacation and then got stuck because I was busy writing a separate story (Upon a Midnight Dreary). Please enjoy, you twenty readers!

Oh, has anyone seen Bungie's new game (Destiny)? Please tell me that I am not the only one who noticed that they have a - and I quote - 'evil space zombie' enemy that sounds suspiciously like the Flood. Or am I just hoping? Yes, I like the Flood as an enemy. Deal with it.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Or else.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Microsoft, Bungie, or 343 Industries. This is for my enjoyment and, hopefully, the enjoyment of others. I do not receive a profit.

The Artifact

Marcus was anxious to get back to the UNSC Infinity. He wanted to talk to Cara, but that would be difficult if everyone pulled guard duty for whatever Crimson had found.

He looked at the others sitting in the Pelican. Juliette and Raj were breaking regs by taking their helmets off for a space flight, while Edward, like himself, was helmeted. Marcus could only guess as to how Arianna treated helmet regulations, but he hoped she could fly whether she wore one or not.

Marcus sat back and sighed, feeling every bump from turbulence as the Pelican gained altitude and tried desperately to escape Requiem's gravity well. With a final effort, Arianna pulled the Pelican free and into space. She flew steadily towardsInfinity and angled her bird toward one of the space docks. Nebula's Pelican slowed to a stop and hovered just outside the magnetic field preventing decompression of the hangar bay. Arianna eased the Pelican in and over one of the landing pads. She carefully lowered thruster power until Marcus felt a slight jolt as the Pelican made contact with the pad. The hum of the engines died and the Pelican's bay door opened.

Each SPARTAN took off his or her helmet (or left it off if they were breaking regulations) and stepped out of the Pelican. Stephenson greeted the members of Fireteam Nebula as they stepped off of the ship. "Hello, Nebula. Lasky and Palmer have no clue what Crimson's artifact will do, so they want all hands on deck."

Marcus half-listened, forming his hands into the signs for Edward. /Lasky and Palmer want us to be ready because they don't know what the artifact that Crimson found will do.\

Therefore, he almost missed Arianna's query. "Which deck do all hands need to be on?"

Stephenson replied with a simple, "This one. Hangar 23. Last door on the left." Marcus signed exactly that to Edward. Everyone put on helmets and then the five SPARTANs strode out of the hangar, demons in full battle regalia.

Marcus found himself on the crest of a wave in a charging sea of armour. Bringing his hand up, fingers curled, Marcus signaled the others to stop, lest they be swept away by the tide of SPARTANs heading towards Crimson's find. Juliette began, "Why are we - oh." Marcus saw everyone else peeking around him to see what Juliette had reacted to. Even Edward could tell that something big was happening as he stood on tiptoes to see over Juliette's tall figure.

There was tall, as in two metres, and then there was really tall, as in two-and-half metres. SPARTANs were all tall, but Juliette was really tall. Edward was somewhere in between, leaning towards really tall, while Arianna and Raj were almost the same height, each about two metres tall. Marcus was between Edward and Arianna (who was slightly taller than Raj) at two hundred twenty-four centimetres.

Juliette used her height to scan the crowd as Nebula stood around the doorway. When an opening presented itself, she led the way as Fireteam Nebula pushed into the crowd. The purple and white, black on black, red with red, turquoise wrapping ice, and sea-foam green next to pastel yellow waded into the sea of coloured armour.

Raj led the way, walking swiftly toward hangar twenty-three. Suddenly, a motion caught Marcus's eye. It was like orange lightning spreading along the sides of the bulkhead separating the hall from the rest of the ship. And it was traveling fast. It had originated from the far end of the hall, where no SPARTANs were, and already, the racing light had passed the first of the SPARTANs, who stopped to see just what was going on.

Marcus half-expected the light to hurt, but it just blew by him as he turned to watch it, his original goal of getting to the origin of the wierd orange lightning nearly forgotten. By the way the other SPARTANs had stopped, Marcus was pretty sure that they wanted to know about the orange light too.

A shoulder bumped Marcus's and a female voice whispered in his ear, "Come on. Lets see where the light came from, not where it goes." Marcus looked right and saw a figure in deep blue Oceanic armour standing next to him.

"What?"

"Let's go to hangar 23, rather than stand here like a bunch of robots."

"But protocol dictates - woah!" Marcus began rising off the ground at a slight angle.

Cara replied as though she had heard his whole sentence even though she too began to float. "Oh, come on. You're a cyborg, not a robot, no matter what the conspiracy theorists believe. It'll be fun. Like swimming." To demonstrate, Cara grabbed one of the many metal bars running parallel to the ceiling, just a bit below it and pulled herself up to it. She then pushed off the ceiling, over the heads of the other floating SPARTANs, toward hangar 23.

Although he shook his head, a wolfish grin crossed Marcus's face. He had no clue how she did it, but Cara had always roped him into the most stupid adventures. Maybe it was because they had always had so much fun doing stupid things. Marcus pushed off of the wall he had drifted near, aiming to overtake Cara.

Looking back, Marcus saw Raj leap after him, determined to find out why Marcus was having fun breaking regulations. Raj was doing a modified breaststroke through the air, and although it looked stupid, air did have some friction. Marcus could feel himself slowing down; Raj was, if anything, going faster.

Looking ahead, Marcus saw Cara crash onto the deck and then felt his own body plummeting towards the floor. As he spun, trying to land on his feet, Marcus saw Raj trying desperately to flap his arms like a bird. Suffice to say that it didn't work. With her head start, Cara was not near any SPARTANs when she fell, and Marcus was near the front, where there were fewer SPARTANs, so he didn't hit anyone. Raj landed with a solid thump - right on top of Juliette.

Marcus got up with a groan and pushed through the thoroughly confused SPARTANs back to the rest of Nebula so that he could make sure Juliette was okay. When he arrived, Raj was off of Juliette and apologising profusely while Edward was . . . laughing? Who knew that quiet, shy Edward Quin found slapstick funny?

When Marcus saw the glint of Arianna's Sunspot visor, she said, "Oh, good. You're here. Did you find the source of the magic light?"

"No."

"Then why didn't you invite me to come flying with you?"

"Because it was a spur of the moment thing. A very spur of the moment thing."

Raj, who had stopped apologising to Juliette, asked, "Spur of the moment? Or just didn't want us to interfere with your girlfriend?"

Marcus blushed underneath his helmet before he replied. "She is not my girlfriend."

Raj shrugged and said, "Edward says that you were going to meet in the ventilation shafts on C-deck. If it wasn't to suck face, why would you meet her in such a secluded area? To let her suck on something else of yours, maybe?"

Juliette turned to look at him, clearly dumbfounded despite her Venator armour. Arianna, on the other hand, took a much more direct route. "That's private!" she hissed before slapping his red E.O.D. helmet right on the rebreather.

Marcus doubted that it would actually hurt Raj, so he went ahead and signed Edward a question. /Why did you tell Kahn that I was going to meet with Cara?\

Edward appeared to shake in his Deadeye armour for a moment before responding. /I didn't see any harm in it, and you didn't ask me to keep it a secret. Plus, it will blow up into something really funny.\

Marcus just groaned. He had liked quiet Edward.

Raj poked Marcus and asked in the most annoying way possible, "So if she isn't your girlfriend, can she be mine?" Marcus knew that it was a joke from the way that Raj ran his hand over his helmet as though slicking his hair back, but Marcus still thought it odd.

A moment later, Raj asked, "But in all seriousness, who is the girl?"

"The 'girl' is Cara Niven, a friend of mine from primary school."

Raj interrupted him to ask, "You call her Cara but me Kahn. Why is that?"

Marcus replied. "First names are for friends, last names for everyone else." Raj looked miffed despite his helmet. "In any case, Cara was deaf, but can hear now, apparently. We were going to meet in a secluded area to catch up when we were told to report to hangar 23.

Speaking of which, we should probably get there to see what the matter is." Raj looked up to see the other SPARTANs walking cautiously toward hangar 23.

Suddenly, Palmer burst out of the door at the far end of the hall. Captain Lasky followed closely behind her and bellowed, "SPARTANs! Doctor Glassman has been taken by Crimson's artifact. We have decided that hangar 23 is off-limits to all SPARTANs that do not need that area as their express come-and-go zone."

Palmer then took over. "In other words, if you aren't Fireteams Crimson or Majestic, don't come in. Do you need an 'Out of Order' sign?"

A loud voice called out, "No!"

Palmer continued. "That was a rhetorical question, SPARTAN Whitshire. I want each fireteam back to their own hangars so that we can start a search grid. Fireteams Opalescent and Nebula were kind enough to turn on some security cameras, so we know of a few possible locations. Your handlers will debrief you."

Marcus made his way back to hangar 10 a bit depressed that his conversation with Cara would have to wait. He trailed behind a bit, hoping that she would come up behind him. But she never did.

Once Nebula was gathered around Stephenson, he took his helmet off and addressed everyone. "Palmer was proud of your individuality and ability to get things done the way you wanted to, especially considering the fact that you are new SPARTANs. As such, she has decided to send you to infiltrate an underwater base that Opalescent's cameras detected. The water interferes with our long-range sensors and broadcasting, and Lasky believes that the Storm Covenant know this. As such, it is possible that they have taken Glassman there. Because we cannot transmit to or receive data from that area, you will go in without any recon and then be flying dark. Oh, and Pearlman, we need all of Fireteam Nebula down under. You are all doing a hard drop into the ocean near where the base is. You won't have a Pelican.

Your armour has two hours of air. That should be plenty. Once you get into the base, which does have air, look for Glassman and kill anything in your way. If you find him, blow the base and get topside as fast as possible. If you don't, well, we don't want the Covvies knowing that we know about the base, so kill everything and then swim up."

Stephenson handed Juliette a small metal disk. "This is your beacon. Once you get to the surface, hit the button on top and a Pelican will pick you up."

Walking over to the wall, Stephenson said, "SOEIV pods are here in this corner of the hangar." Everyone climbed into an HEV and Stephenson closed each door, saying, "Good luck," to each SPARTAN as be closed his or her pod. Stephenson walked over to a panel in the wall and hit a button.

Marcus felt his pod plummet and felt the tug of the artificial gravity get less and less. Four video screens popped open in his helmet, showing the inside of four separate helmets. The first screen had a video of a pale woman with violet eyes, platinum hair, and a slight pout at not being in control of her flight path. The next video was of a dark-skinned man with brown hair, brown eyes and a joyful expression. Raj was just enjoying the ride. On the next screen, Edward looked like he was a million miles away, his amber eyes glazed over. How he could ignore the multitude of bumps as the SOEIV pods used micro-thrusters to readjust themselves, Marcus just didn't know. On the last screen, Juliette's red hair framed her green eyes, which were filled with worry. Marcus guessed she had heard the stories about ODSTs that had him similarly worried, considering his firsthand experience. Burnt up pods, crazy landing angles, failed chutes, and even plain, simple failure to find a missing ODST when a pod micro-adjusted the wrong way.

In his own time as an ODST, Marcus had never had that happen to him, but he did know that the stories tended to be more fact than rumour. He was always a bit cautious of jumping, even though he'd succesfully done it eight times before this. Marcus had certainly earned the "badass" tattoo on his shoulder, but that didn't stop his trepadition.

On that happy note, Marcus rode his pod into the briny deep.

A/N: Am I characterising everyone well? It sort of feels like they are all bleeding into one another. Oh, and tell me if I have any mistakes. Thank you.