The Jungles of Valhalla were thick, lush and rich with moisture and life. Several life forms cavorted by their own methods within the arid thickness of flora. Greens and yellows and flowery colors permeated the surrounding landscape for as far as the eye could see. Even the air seemed alive, as thick as it was with pollen and spores and dust and insects. The croaking of frogs and the chirping of crickets were the only audible sounds for miles, the heavy woodlands virgin to the hands of mankind until now.
The humidity would have been too much for Speartip had she not been accustomed to it in her own hometown. Her blazing white armor was also equipped with the latest in interior climate control systems so her body knew not the difference between the air in her suit and the air on the alien world's floor.
Her environmental system flowed with coolant throughout every piece of armor, cooling her entire body. In any normal circumstance, her suit would have been fitted with an AI to help regulate the system, as well as keep watch for enemies and coordinate her life support systems and HUD.
However in the aftermath of Project Freelancer and the death of the Director of the program, all factories and resource groups and research centers both on AI development and AI theory had all been shut down by advocacy councils, senators and special interest groups which all had been erected due to the rise of AI research and development and given the role of overseers of the process and the marketing and the distribution of AI technology both on a martial and retail scale.
The translation; to the chagrin of the public, the UNSC military and to Speartip personally; was that there were no more AI available for the foreseeable future. The Cortanas and the Iridis all the way down the line to the top of the line combat vehicle standard, the Nihilus, were all gone having been deactivated after the Project Freelancer fiasco.
All because of HIM. Speartip thought, grinding her teeth.
All of the troubles, the problems and now the deactivation of all of those little light bulbs can be traced back to HIM.
It wasn't that Speartip liked the AI, she hated them. But a simple non-Smart AI would do wonders so she could focus on her mission and not checking the readings of her air supply every hour.
Still, she would manage. Every important gauge and dial to control every aspect of her armor had been mounted within a 3X2 armored gauntlet affixed to her wrist and she had been drilled since day one of her Special Tactics Force training. She knew her armor backward and forward like the back of her hand.
She aimed her battle rifle in a sweeping reconnaissance motion around the perimeter of the T4-H1000 before declaring her immediate surroundings clear and free of danger.
What a landing that was. Speartip sighed to herself.
It had been tight. Speartip had needed to use her own two eyes just as much as she had to depend upon her ship's instruments and sensors. She had scraped a few oak branches which lay to the far left of her ship, but she had brought the ship down in one piece according to her post-flight checklist.
She replaced the rifle on her back and brought to bear a hand held wide-range scanner. Her helmet's HUD could provide short-range life form readings, but with the help of a satellite in orbit around the planet, her hand-held could identify life on a planet-wide basis.
Keeping half an eye on her HUD's short-range scanners to locate the presence of any would-be predators she loaded the known coordinates of Valhalla's regional red and blue team bases.
She had known the sim-trooper bases to have been abandoned only a few months before. However after the reds and blues helped the worn and downtrodden men and women of Chorus' resistance in winning their war and subsequently finding their friends Sarge and David, they had opted to return to Valhalla in order to feel at home.
She scoffed within her helmet even as she searched and recorded the several blue blips of life into her nav-computer for her search.
Valhalla is a total void in the middle of nowhere! Why those red and blue idiots would want to live here is beyond me.
The blinking red light in the upper-right corner of her HUD, along with the sounds of her danger klaxon sounding in her ears through her speakers interrupted Speartip's thoughts. All senses were on alert as the tiny white letters in the upper-left corner read "danger imminent" along with the angry red blip of an enemy appearing on her mini map a few yards behind her.
BBBBBBB
"I don't want any trouble, Carolina." Missouri stated through clenched teeth. She always had been dramatic.
"Every Freelancer terminal read that you were dead and she had been thrown out due to being broken and faulty," Carolina insisted, equally as testy. She tightened her grip on her rifle, "So don't hand me any bullshit or I'm going to develop a severely itchy trigger finger."
Tucker groaned from his place in the corner of the room.
"What?" Carolina sighed through grit teeth as if she would really rather not be asking the question.
"Well, it's just that developing an itchy trigger finger doesn't seem like the best one-liner an agent of your caliber can come up with."
"What's wrong with it?" Carolina defended, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
"Please, I thought Church had crappy one-liners, but you beat his by a mile."
"Excuse me?" Church demanded, crossing his robotic arms.
"Like you could come up with anything better." Carolina accused, ignoring Church.
"I don't have to. Star power speaks for itself. Also, I have a glowing sword. Your argument is invalid." Tucker said proudly.
"I said, excuse me. What do you mean my one-liners are crappy?" Church interrupted.
"What? You don't remember?" Tucker asked with a smirk.
"No. I don't think I do. Enlighten me." Church challenged.
"I've got half a mind to kill you and the other half agrees?"
"Wait, that was a good one!"
"It's time for you to split, personality?"
"Umm, well…"
"Then there was the time you told Wash that his stupid and crazy pills had come in."
Church was rendered speechless for a moment.
"Hey, this isn't about me. This is about Carolina's shitty response." Church backpedalled.
Carolina balked.
"Traitor." Carolina mumbled to the physical manifestation of her AI.
"Hey, you gotta know when to argue and when to deflect the argument to someone else." Church said, walking back to the wall where he leaned against it pretending to study his nonexistent fingernails.
"Idiots. All of them. Especially Tucker." Carolina sighed irritably.
"Hey, I heard that." Tucker said, offended.
"That's because I wanted you to." Carolina said pointedly.
Missouri seemed dumbfounded, if Carolina could tell through several inches of armor. However, the shining pink hologram Lambda emitted was much easier to read.
"Lambda is not unauthorized. She was installed professionally, so there is no need to worry. She was meant for me. We are exactly what the other needs. She has no aggression parameters. I am harmless. So just put the weapon down and talk to us Carolina."
"She was the Alpha's love… wasn't she?"
The sudden sound of Church's voice startled everyone in the room. Something in his voice sounded as if he were grasping for a long-abandoned hope. Missouri took a step backward, suddenly wary.
"Only one of three AI taken from the Alpha. One, he kept. One, he gave away to another organization. The last was meant to be thrown out… The Director saw no point in it, completely overlooked it because it held the emotion of… Love."
There was a roboticness that didn't match his human male voice. If he had eyes they would have been open wide with the wonder of the realization, and with a touch of lust for… something Missouri couldn't quite read from his voice alone, which was the only indication of Church's emotion.
Church moved closer to Missouri and Lambda's shining display in reverence, causing Missouri to step back once more to further the distance from Church's leer which seemed only… hungry.
"He never would have given Beta to anyone else. No organization's promise, no amount of money, no amount of power could lure Beta away from him. Beta was… she was… very close to him. But you, Lambda. You were the missing piece. The missing component. You were the reason he could never get it right. You were the one element that made his experiments on… her… to be incomplete, faulty."
Suddenly, Church seemed to snap out of his reverie. He muttered something about a name; it was unintelligibly to the gold and purple soldier standing aghast near the open portal leading to the outside of the base.
He couldn't decipher it, but the name was feminine and started with an A.
A/N: Hello everyone. I am doing quite well in Marine Mechanic school and am learning a ton every day. Knowledge seeking can be addictive if you let it become so. And I am, so yay! I just wanted to say that that's why I haven't been on for a while. My mind is wrapped up mostly in studying, but I hope this chapter makes up for it.
I need to and want to give special thanks to Jaden Silver who has been my point-girl in this thing. Two elements of this chapter can be dedicated to her taking the time to talk me through some of the canon elements of this wonderful series.
Jaden is the woman who told me that Beta was Allison, or Tex. That's who Beta was, the memory of Allison, so that's why Church goes ultra spooky there toward the end. Seeing Lambda sparked something inside of him and he remembered Beta.
Jaden is also the one who gave me a better idea for Lambda being female than the one I had. I admit I tweaked it a little bit. But the end of this chapter is a hint and a set up for the section in the next chapter where I will explain just why oh why Lambda is a girl.
So super thank-you's to Jaden Silver and also to you the fans who read and review and follow and favorite. I love you all, and I do this for each and every one of you.