Aurelia spent what felt like hours in the cockpit of the pelican, unable to pick herself off the floor. She watched as the pelican touched down safely in Triumph's hangar. She watched the escort pelican land fly in above them. She could hear the clatter and murmur as the humans disembarked. She should be there for this; the first (open) meeting between the citadel races and living, breathing humans. She should look each of them in the eyes and tell them to their face how she wore the skin of one of their own. How she had tricked them, lured them in with a false sense of security. Given them a glimmer of hope before Halliday ripped it all away.

But she wasn't a soldier. She wasn't brave like Varso. Or the captain. Or Halliday. She was a fool who spent her time entertaining fantasies of grandeur, imagining herself as a dashing ODST fighting to protect humanity in an unwinnable war. She reveled in holding their weapons, standing where they stood, and wearing the trappings of their war. She once thought that she would have been one of the brave many to stand tall against the Covenant. Instead, she crumbled under the pressure, saved only by an AI who guided her along like a child.

Ruiz was a veteran of six campaigns against the Covenant, Halliday had told her that much. She blooded the soil of six different worlds. She looked the onslaught of the Covenant in the eyes and stood her ground. She had survived wounds, ambushes, and decorated her chest with medals earned with tireless valor. And Halliday had stolen her identity like it all meant nothing; worn the chevrons on her armor without a thought of how Ruiz had earned them.

Who was she to stand with the Spartans?

She was a coward. A nobody. A humanoid body to fill out an empty uniform. Aurelia slumped against the armored door of the cockpit and stared into the tinted visor of Ruiz's helmet.

She could feel the rush of the adrenaline subsiding. Her heart no longer thrummed a rapid beat beneath her skin. Her rapid breaths smoothed into something far more controlled. Her eyes felt heavy. As the first conversation of a new era occurred only a few dozen meters behind her, Aurelia Savo drifted off to sleep.

She was woken by an armored hand rapping on the pelican door behind her. She was slow to recognize the sound at first, still trying to shake the drowsiness from her bones. The noise continued to get louder. With a start, she recognized what the sound was.

In a second, her heart was racing again, adrenaline once more flooding her veins. A voice carried through the door.

"Dr. Savo?"

It was a Turian voice, the thrumming of the translator a dead giveaway. And a familiar one at that. The tension evaporated. Somehow, she managed to find her voice again, and it felt unfamiliar in her throat.

"Yeah Varso, I'm here. I just needed minute."

She picked herself up off the titanium floor of the pelican, the heavy combat armor seemingly having doubled its weight since she put it on. She grabbed her balaclava and Ruiz's helmet, before opening the door.

Behind the door, Varso looked back at her, a confused expression marking his face. Fragments of his team mulled about behind him, talking in hushed whispers to crew members eager to hear their stories. The back of the pelican was empty, the humans nowhere in sight. Not the heavy weaponry and equipment the Spartans had slung onto the overhead racks. Not the strange cylindrical tubes they hauled with them. Nothing.

It was as if they had never existed. She shook loose the last whisps of fatigue from her limbs.

"How…how long was I asleep?" She winced as soon as the final word slipped from her mouth.

It took Varso a few moments. He cocked his head slightly. And when he finally processed what Aurelia had said, he started to laugh. Slowly at first, a few chuckles beneath the soldier's façade. The chuckles built into a hardy laugh, and before long, Varso was leaning against the pelican bulkhead trying to get his breath back under control, his armored chest heaving with uncontrollable laughter.

Aurelia realized with a start, that she too was laughing, soft giggles and a creeping warmth spreading across her cheeks. Before long, she was laughing in earnest alongside Varso, the crewmembers outside sending them worried looks.

It was absurd. All of it. An alien ship, built by a race that somehow, miraculously, looked just like her. They tore a hole in space and sailed through it. She was inside a structure the size of a small system. She had just been the first person to talk to a human, face to face. It was all so impossible.

Six months ago, she was visiting home. She would go out with her friends at night and drink the night away watching the majesty of a Thessia sunset. Some of her friends worked accounting jobs, helping to bankroll the Asari financial juggernaut. Others were scientists like her. Or diplomats. All living normal Asari lives.

And then there was her. By now, she was sure that her friends would have heard about the discovery of a new race. Maybe they had even pieced together that she was a part of the fleet, given what she had told them. But if she were to tell them the things she now knew, they would laugh in her face.

It was just so ridiculous. That all this would happen to her. And she couldn't stop laughing.

As the raucous laughter rattled her lungs, Varso seemed to finally be recovering, his breaths finally coming under control. Every bit the soldier, he recovered quickly, straightening himself up, and trying to recover what little dignity he had left.

Eventually, he got around to answering her question.

"An hour or so. We thought you had broken down or something. Halliday said you were all right, but you gave us a scare…"

Varso continued, "… I wanted to go in and get you, but things were more than a little tense. I thought we were going to have a shootout."

"…and you were sleeping?" another fit of laughter racked his body.

An hour. Which meant...

"What happened to the humans, where did they go? Are they alright? Did anything happen?" she asked, her tone frantic. Had she missed the first meeting between humanity and the citadel species?

Varso's face fell. The mood in the pelican vanished. His tone was much more dour when he spoke again.

"They, uh. They took it about as well as you could hope. Pretty quiet, knowing what that AI told them. The captain was able to calm things down. Keep bullets from flying. It was pretty touch and go there for a few minutes."

Varso looked back over his shoulder, where his squad still wandered the hangar. He paused for a moment.

"They said they had some things they needed to discuss amongst themselves. Most of them headed down to the medical deck, with the pods and that…thing. The lieutenant and one of the others asked to discuss something with the captain on the bridge. In private. It sounded urgent. The captain asked you to be there. By name."

Which meant that they might be waiting on her. She was late. She needed to grab Halliday and get to the bridge, as quickly as possible. She turned to the pedestal, as Varso stepped out of her way. Running her fingers over the slot in its front, she found Halliday's chip was gone. Her heart plummeted in dread.

She whirled to face Varso.

"Where is…."

"The lieutenant took her with him to the bridge. She should be there now," Varso replied, unworried by the missing AI.

Of course. The humans had taken her. Aurelia didn't know how that didn't cross her mind. Halliday was on their side. Halliday had always been on their side. Aurelia didn't know why that thought hurt her. It only made sense. The AI was probably overjoyed to be back in human hands. With people she could trust. It was selfish to expect any difference, for Halliday to stick with her, an alien, a mere mechanism to contact her people. She had just…

Thought they were a team.


The descent into the darkness of the elevator shaft terrified Osh'Leih nar Teslaya. She clung to the bare metallic cable with all the strength her hands could manage, slowly letting herself slide. Every inch she lowered; she carefully watched the cable for any burrs that could rip her suit. To survive all that she had, only to die of an infection from a greased cable, would be a new low. She didn't really want to go down into the depths of the city, but she didn't see another choice. Eventually the Asari police would manage to find a way to open the door into the city square she left behind.

She would not spend her time on this new world in a jail cell. She still had no idea who had released her. It wasn't a coincidence, that was for sure. Maybe there was another Quarian, one who made it here before her. One who was currently guiding her to wherever they were hiding out. Doubtful. But Osh couldn't come up with any better ideas, so she continued to make her way down the elevator shaft.

Further down, the corridor was bathed in red emergency lighting, and she began passing sealed doors in the walls of the shaft. The circular hatches were sealed tight by security doors, and regardless, she couldn't reach them from her precarious perch on the wires.

Eventually, she reached the cab of the elevator. She landed on the roof with a thud, and immediately shook loose her arms and legs, already cramping up from the exertion. While she waited for her extremities to recover, she took a good look around the roof of the elevator cab. The access hatch into the interior of the elevator had been opened. Somebody had been here before here. She could see the top of one of the doorframes peeking above the side of the cab. Luckily for her, whatever had stopped the cab stopped it on one of the floors.

She dropped down into the dingy light of the elevator. The door was open, and behind it were long white and gray corridors. As she made her way onto the level, she felt a chill. The air down here was cold, far colder that it should be. As she looked around the room, she saw hundreds of banks of computers. Their status lights twinkled in the low lighting of the corridor.

That explains the cold. This was obviously some kind of server facility. Probably for most of the city, given the huge number of banks. She looked down the corridor. It went on for hundreds of meters, before disappearing beyond a bend. Keelah. This is incredible. Just a fraction of this kind of computing power, assuming similar efficiency to Quarian designs, could handle the everyday computing load of the entire fleet.

As she walked carefully down the corridor, screens on the walls flashed messages at her, much like they had during her run from the Asari officers. They flashed arrows continuing down the corridor she was walking down, a simplified circular avatar seeming to guide her further down the path. Was this somebody's idea of a joke?

Either way, she had no choice, and she continued down the corridor.

Eventually she came to reach a circular room. The floor was a thick glass, below which were even more computing banks. In the center there was some kind of plug in the floor, attached to two vertical rails that reached into the ceiling. The moment she entered the room, there was a loud hiss, and the plug slowly rose to the roof.

Startled, Osh carefully made her way to the hole left by the plug. She felt something roll beneath her feet. She nudged the objects with her foot. They looked like casings, some brass, some plastic, scattered across the room. She looked behind her. The wall and the door she had come from were dotted with dozens of scorch marks; the same kind she had seen in the city square above her. And ominously, the plug and the rails it ran on were pockmarked by hundreds of small impacts, only slightly larger than those left by mass effect rounds.

It seems not even this underbelly of the city was left untouched by the combat. As she looked down into the hole where the plug used to be, she saw another room, just like the one she had just left. Turning to see a downwards arrow flash from her unknown guide, she leaped down the hole to the floor below.

The floor below was much like the one above her, and once she left the circular room she dropped into, she emerged into another long corridor with computer banks. The cooling system on the floor seemed to have malfunctioned, and a heavy layer of frost covered everything in the room. The exhaust ports on Osh's suit released puffs of condensation with every breath. There were more casings and signs of battle down here.

Carefully, she continued.

After the frosted level, there was another plug, and below it, another drop to a third level. Eventually, she came to a longer rectangular room. Like clockwork, the door slid open. This room was different. On one side, were control consoles looking over a long window. Osh couldn't believe what she saw outside. The widow looked out onto a network of cooling towers, with walkways interspersed between them. The huge bay wasn't what caught her attention, however. Built into the ceiling was a massive structure, built of mud and chitin, with thousands of holes and entrances to its cone-shaped structures. A hive. For what, Osh didn't know, but it sent a creeping feeling up her back.

It wasn't until she stepped away from the window that she noticed there was more in the room. Not more than a few meters to her left was the collapsed battle dress of a UNSC officer. She paused as the realization struck. The human died here, to the pulse. This should be a grave, not a hideout. She stepped closer to the pile.

The armor was dark gray and blue, and was attached to a pack with what looked like communications gear intact. Osh looked closer. There was a name across the front of the chest plate in bold stenciled letters.

'DARE'

Nestled into the layers of heavy rubber protective layers and composite armored plates, was a delicate earpiece. On the table above the collapsed armor, was a long black pistol. Osh gave it a long look. She could use a weapon.

It felt wrong, like robbing a grave, but she grabbed the black weapon. It had a trigger, that much she recognized. Beyond that, she had no clue how to operate the human weapon. Her long slender fingers didn't fit well on the grip and made it difficult to manipulate the weapon clearly designed for the hands of another species.

Another sign flashed on the wall towards a doorway opposite the one she came in. Pistol in hand, Osh set off once again, placing her faith in the hands of her guide.


The closed blast doors to the bridge took on a new weight. Behind them, was the truth. No deceptions. Nothing to hide behind. Behind the doors was carnage. A decades long war. When Aurelia walks through those doors, she's no longer an anonymous scientist. She's not an ODST coming to the rescue. She has no armor to disguise who she really is. She's one of them. She's an alien, something other. And goddess knows how many Covenant 'others' these humans have killed.

And she's the alien who gave them false hope. Who lied to their face. Who pretended to be something she wasn't.

The bridge guards don't even spare her a glance. They are too busy looking straight ahead, ramrod straight, like a page out of a Hierarchy conduct manual. Their taloned hands clutch their rifles tightly. The captain told them to put their best foot forward. Good.

Almost as if in a ceremony, one of the guards triggers the door controls.

The heavy blast doors slid open.

The familiar feeling hit her immediately. Just like on the pelican: dread, danger, fear. Her instincts screamed at her to run. Ice ran through her veins, and the world seemed to slow down around her.

This time, instead of a golden visor, a pair of listless green eyes stared back at her, like a predator fixated on its prey. The Spartan was pale, too pale; the pallor of her skin left dark circles around her eyes. Her face looked sickly, the Spartan's sunken cheeks bringing attention to her powerful jaw, clenched tight in an unreadable frown.

As if to prove her humanity, the Spartan had bright red hair, cut short to the base of her neck. The hair was filthy, weeks of sweat and oils causing the fine strands to hang in clumps on either side of her face.

Aurelia had no doubt who this Spartan was.

She wore the more modern version of the armor Aurelia had seen. Angular and refined. Slim and efficient, relatively speaking. The rifle she had brought with her on the pelican, as long as Aurelia was tall, now leaned against the holo-table. The muzzle break was the size of her fist. Her helmet was on the table next to it, the golden visor reflecting the images of a ring floating above the holo-table.

And the Spartan knew who Aurelia was too. Her rifle may have been leaning on the table, but Aurelia didn't miss the Spartan's armored right hand, resting on the M6 at her hip.

The Spartan didn't break her gaze, almost daring her to make a move. As Aurelia stared back, the Spartan's gaze turned questioning, and then dismissive. The red-haired Spartan looked away, back at the holo-table. Her hand still hadn't left her pistol.

Captain Victus finally reacted to the sound of the bridge doors opening and looked up from his work.

"Ah! Finally!" Victus started, turning to greet Aurelia with a smile, "I would like to formally introduce to you our science lead on this expedition, Dr. Aurelia Savo."

It was only now that Aurelia got a proper look around at the bridge. There were two Spartans here, not just one. The other stood opposite his comrade. His face was more fleshed out, and his eyes alert and responsive. His hair was cropped even shorter, close cut to his head. It was black, with a greying stripe at his brow. This Spartan didn't watch her as intently as the last, more curious than anything.

The Turian bridge crew of course, were by now well used to her presence. Some of them still eyed the humans suspiciously. Others gave her a quick wave. Most, however, kept their eyes glued to their monitors.

Around the holo-table, besides the Spartans and Victus, were displays of the other officers of the combined fleet. On her pedestal, Halliday paced, her back turned to Aurelia.

Aurelia stepped forwards, as Victus gestured her to his side.

"Dr. Savo, this is lieutenant …Frederic?" Victus paused, checking to make sure he was remembered the unfamiliar human name properly, "and his comrade, petty officer…?"

He trailed off, unsure of the Spartan's name.

"Sierra-058," the woman replied, her hoarse voice barely audible above the din of the bridge as she avoided looking at the Asari.

"Linda," overruled the lieutenant, flashing a disapproving glance across the table at his teammate, who glared back.

"Her name is Linda," the lieutenant said, "and I presume you were the brave staff sergeant Ruiz?"

Aurelia's eyes jumped up, and her heart skipped a beat. But when she met the lieutenant's gaze, his eyes were friendly, and without malice. The faint hint of a smile flashed across his face before it returned to a pensive frown.

"I'm sorry."

The lieutenant watched her cryptically for a few moments, before finally relenting.

"Don't be. It was the right call. Halliday could have prepared you a little better though."

He trailed off, with a long sigh.

"But that's not why we're here," he said, suddenly somber. Aurelia looked back at Halliday. She hadn't spoken a word yet. She hadn't even recognized Aurelia's presence on the bridge. The AI was deep in thought, her fingers fidgeting nervously on her spear. Aurelia wasn't sure she had even seen the AI quite so taken aback. Normally, Halliday had an answer for everything.

Frederic looked up at the Turians gathered around the room.

"We know what caused the pulse."

The bridge was silent. Halliday didn't react. She had obviously already heard the news. Aurelia's mind raced. How? How can they know? All this time, she had presumed innocence. She had presumed that humanity had no role in the pulse that wiped out human, Turian, and Covenant colonies alike. But of course, they might. If they found the right technology, harnessed that kind of power, would a species on the brink of extinction not pull the trigger?

Victus was the one to voice the unspoken question.

"And how, lieutenant, do you know?"

Frederic nodded at the ring floating above the holo-table. It was shown orbiting a planet, a large gas giant. The resolution of the hologram was low, clearly not a product of long-term scientific scans. Next to the gas giant, the ring looked small and slender. However, Aurelia knew that a construct of that size was still beyond the capability of any of the citadel races. The ring was massive, even if the hologram didn't betray it.

On the outside the ring was clearly metal, large channels and lights running along its circumference. On the interior however, eerily similar to the Dyson sphere, was terrain. Oceans and mountains, deserts and jungles, all scattered the inner circumference of the ring. A habitat then. For what?

"The Covenant called it Halo."

Murmurs filled the bridge. Frederic was watching, gauging the reactions of the Turians around the table, while Victus was listening keenly, staring into the projection of this 'Halo'. Halo. Another name with religious symbology, at least if her translator was to be trusted.

"What is it?" asked Victus.

"A weapon of last resort," Frederic responded.

"Built by the humans?"

Aurelia suspected that both Victus and herself already knew the answer to that question. They had both seen the state of the UNSC military. It was impressive, but not this impressive. A ring, tens of thousands of kilometers across. It was beyond what the humans had built. But whomever built the Dyson sphere…

"No," Frederic sighed, "A precursor race, now presumed extinct. The same ones that built the shield world."

Precursor race? Precursor tech wasn't exactly Aurelia's area of expertise, but over the three centuries of her life, she had picked up a detail or few. She knew enough to know that whatever built that Dyson sphere and the Halo, was not the same race as their Precursors. Which meant another race. And another mysterious disappearance.

"It will be easier if I start from the beginning," he said, as an unfamiliar city appeared above the holo-table.

"Côte d'Azur, Sigma Octanus IV. July of 2552."

"A covenant fleet was detected entering the system from slipspace. Miraculously, the garrison fleet was able to repel them in orbit, but not before the covenant landed and seized control of Côte d'Azur."

The hologram of the city changed, fires billowing out of the downtown high-rises, and entire blocks of buildings in the outskirts were flattened by heavy conflict. Was this the cost of a UNSC victory?

"After Marines were unable to establish a foothold in the city, FLEETCOM authorized a Spartan deployment, codenamed OCEAN BREAKER. 12 Spartans were deployed, and blue team infiltrated downtown Côte d'Azur."

Victus cleared his throat before asking, "blue team, lieutenant?"

Frederic was briefly taken aback, before realizing his company, "Of course, apologies sir. We usually divide ourselves into small fireteams of 3-6 Spartans. Blue team for OCEAN BREAKER consisted of our team lead Sierra-117, Sierra-087, Sierra-005, and myself. Linda led green team during this operation."

The red-haired Spartan lifted her head at the mention of her name, but otherwise seemed lost in her own thoughts, staring at the ruined city on the table.

Victus probed further, "and these 12 Spartans, are they the same ones we rescued?"

"Negative. You rescued 3 of us. Sierra-087 needed medical attention before she could join us. The others… well, the others are from another project."

"One they kept hidden from us," grumbled Linda from across the table, a scowl etched on her face.

The 3 Spartans would be the ones in the heavier armor, Aurelia surmised. Which meant that Sierra-087 would be the Spartan that first contacted her. The one she had mistakenly called lieutenant. And more importantly, the others were from another project, no doubt veiled in the highest of security if even the Spartans didn't know about it.

Frederic continued with the debriefing before Aurelia could finish her thought.

"Blue team found concentrated Covenant activity around the Côte d'Azur Museum of Natural History. They had set up an orbital transmitter and were analyzing a relic in the museum. Meanwhile, the fleet defenses had managed to repel Covenant reinforcements at heavy costs."

"UNSC Iroquois destroyed a Covenant stealth vessel in orbit, and in doing so, was able to intercept part of the transmission from Côte d'Azur. The signal didn't make any sense at the time."

"We now believe that the artifact in the museum was Forerunner, made by the same civilization that created Halo. Unfortunately, we didn't realize the significance of that fact at first."

The lieutenant still hadn't explained what Halo was, but the prospect of an extinct galactic civilization with that kind of power was enough to keep Aurelia enthralled with the story. Why had the humans put the relic into a museum if they didn't understand its significance?

More importantly, however, Aurelia was getting a firsthand look into the closing months of the UNSC. Events that unfolded in the last 9 months, while she was blissfully unaware in citadel space. The battles that Frederic and Linda fought weren't history. It was a recent memory. Had only she known.

"That takes us to Reach."

The tone in the room shifted. Frederic's commanding visage fell into one of defeat and regret. Across the table, Linda had closed her eyes and her head hung. Aurelia thought she had missed something, the sudden change from the victories on Sigma Octanus IV caught her off guard. She could tell that the Turians felt the shift too.

A new planet appeared above the table.

"In early August, all surviving Spartan IIs were redeployed to Reach, in the Epsilon Eridani system, where we were assigned to the UNSC Pillar of Autumn under Captain Jacob Keyes."

Halliday interrupted for the first time, for the benefit of the non-humans on the bridge, "Halcyon class light cruiser. The predecessor to ships like Triumph. Old and durable, but slow with underwhelming offensive firepower."

"Indeed," said Frederic, continuing where he had left off, "FLEETCOM was putting together a mission that they hoped could end the war. It was desperate."

"We could have made it work," retorted Linda, fixated on the hologram of Reach.

Frederic sighed, compromising on his teammate's interjection.

"It was our only option. FLEETCOM estimated that Reach would be found in the next couple of months."

"And why was Reach so important?" Victus asked, "from the sounds of it, the UNSC had been losing worlds for decades. Why gamble it all now?"

Frederic took a moment before answering, "Reach was the beating heart of the UNSC war machine. Earth may have been the cultural center of human space, but the military revolved around Reach. The largest shipyards and the most experienced garrisons. Headquarters of half a dozen different departments of the UNSC. Reach was the staging grounds for our armies and fleets. If Reach fell, forming a new offensive against the Covenant would be impossible."

"And without a new offensive…" Victus inferred.

"HIGHCOM estimated a year. Maybe two, depending on how long it took to track down the more isolated colonies. RED FLAG was our last opportunity to launch an offensive operation before too many assets got tied up in the defense of the home colonies. It was the only plan we had left."

Victus frowned, still uncomfortable with the UNSC's former plans, "Still, the commitment of so many Spartans to a single mission, if something went wrong…"

Frederic didn't respond. Neither did Linda, who continued to stare at the hologram of Reach with empty eyes. There was an unspoken weight to the silence, an answer in the absence of one. The strategic and tactical discussion of the war for the most part went over Aurelia's head. But she respected Victus, and even in her short time with him, knew him as a practical and effective leader with an inherent instinct for developing situations. And she could tell that he knew the outcome of the story already. So, this was the UNSC. Wise enough to know they had lost. Brave enough to keep on fighting.

"How many?" Aurelia could see the guilt on the Spartans' faces, the grief laced under layers of military training.

Frederic drew a deep breath before answering.

"In the last 9 months, we lost more Spartans than in the first 26 years of the war combined. At every turn, something went wrong. Mistakes cascaded. Too many valuable objectives to defend. Too many things more important than a Spartans' life."

"The Covenant found Reach in late July last year. First, they landed recon patrols undetected in the Viery territory. When they were discovered, the Army led offenses across Eposz. HIGHCOM still hoped for a successful suppression of the invasion, long enough to initiate RED FLAG. We almost made it. On August 30th, Pillar of Autumn was hours away from departure when another, larger fleet arrived. That was the beginning of the end."

The hologram shifted to another view, showing clusters of orbital platforms arranged amongst the collected fleets of the UNSC. Aurelia remembered seeing the ruined wrecks of platforms like this around Earth, the massive cannons drifting peacefully. She remembered being paranoid that the cannons would be turned on Corvus and the Turian fleet.

"With our escape cut-off, Captain Keyes ordered the Autumn to join the defense forces and authorized the deployments of the Spartans to two different objectives. I led red team, which deployed to the surface to defend the power generators for our ODPs. Without the firepower of the ODPs, the fleet would be overwhelmed in hours."

"And the others?" Victus asked.

"An ONI prowler docked at a station above Reach was being prepped for a clandestine incursion into Covenant occupied space. Due to the sensitive nature of its mission, the station AI was unable to access the prowler's systems. This meant that the AI was unable to destroy the navigation data on board the ship, and it reported a Cole Protocol violation to command when the Covenant boarded the station. Sierra-117 led a three Spartan Blue team to the station to destroy the data."

Victus murmured under his breath.

Aurelia voiced her confusion, "What's the danger of navigation data? Surely the Covenant already understood slipspace travel. Why not send the whole team to the generators? That must have been the more important mission."

For the first time since the retrieval of the Spartans, Halliday turned towards Aurelia, "I know you're smarter than that Savo. You've seen what happens when the UNSC encounters the Covenant in space. It doesn't end well. Planets fall in weeks, if not days. How do you think we held on for 27 years with those kinds of odds?"

"You mean…"

Frederic finished, "Cole Protocol ensured that the location of human colonies is destroyed at any cost. That data was more important than any missile or MAC. More important than any Spartan. If that data fell into the hands of the Covenant, Earth would be under siege by the end of the week."

The covenant would find Earth in early November. This mission only bought the UNSC two months. Such a waste.

Linda still hadn't moved. She seemed to be in a trance, almost ignoring the briefing. Uneasy at seeing the Spartan looking so lost, Aurelia let her curiosity got the better of her, "Linda, what team were you on?"

The Spartan flinched when she heard her name. She looked at Aurelia without turning her head, her eyes tracking the Asari at the head of the holo-table. She didn't say anything for a moment, examining the Asari.

When her response came, it was hoarse and quiet, and Aurelia almost missed it.

"Blue team."

Aurelia expected more elaboration, but it never came, and shortly, Frederic was continuing his briefing.

"Both teams experienced a series of setbacks that delayed their return to the Pillar of Autumn, and by the time red team was ready for extraction, the Covenant had gained orbital supremacy. The survivors of red team retreated to CASTLE base on Reach's surface. Blue team completed their mission and escaped Reach on board the Pillar of Autumn."

Which meant that Frederic was left on the surface of Reach, while Linda escaped. How had they both ended up in the same place?

"The Pillar of Autumn was supposed to make a blind jump before returning to human space. As we would find out later, the AI assigned to the ship for RED FLAG had other ideas. Through research into classified Forerunner artifacts on Reach, Dr. Halsey was able to decipher the intercepted message from Sigma Octanus IV. They were slipspace coordinates."

"The AI chose the coordinates from the relic for her 'blind jump'. On September 19th, 2552, Pillar of Autumn emerged from slipspace, to find Alpha Halo orbiting the gas giant Threshold, and a Covenant fleet waiting for them."

So that's where this story led. Aurelia had gotten so engrossed in the tales of the UNSC's final hours that she had forgotten why they were all here in the first place: the pulse. Or perhaps more accurately, the Halo.

Victus was to the point, "and you think this 'Alpha Halo' is responsible for the pulse? You still haven't told us what these rings do."

Frederic shook his head, and said, "No. Alpha Halo is dust. On their arrival, Pillar of Autumn engaged the Covenant fleet. They held their own but were eventually forced to abandon ship. Captain Keyes and a skeleton crew crash landed the Autumn on the ring, while the ship's transports and lifeboats rendezvoused on the surface."

Aurelia gasped, turning again to Linda, "you mean you actually landed on the 'Halo'? What was it like? Did it look dangerous? Did it have complex flora and fauna? Was the terrain like the Dyson sphere? Did the…"

"I didn't," the Spartan's response lost in the invigorated speculation of the scientist.

"…Because I really would find it interesting to see if there was a difference in archaeology between the two. Oh, and how the day-night cycle felt on a rotating ring. It all must have been so fascinating. I can't even imagine…"

"I said I didn't land on Halo." the Spartan snapped at Aurelia, now avoiding eye contact with the Asari, "I was on ice. John had to handle it alone."

"…on ice?"

"Cryosleep, Savo. Usually used to conserve resources on long slipspace jumps, and in rare cases, injury," Halliday explained, "You've seen the pods up on deck 7."

Aurelia remembers the rooms, naturally. She remembers pretty much everything she's seen on Triumph. She just never really thought much about them, too enraptured in Triumph's systems. Cryotech wasn't exactly cutting edge in Citadel space. With the speed of travel by relay, the average vessel had no need for the use of the technology. When surrounded by so much never-before-seen human technology, she hadn't thought much of the cryo pods.

"So why…"

Halliday gave Aurelia a pointed look. The kind of look that Halliday only gave her when she was about to go poking around in the wrong part of Triumph's systems. The kind of look Halliday gave when Aurelia was about to make a big mistake. Before, it was the SHIVA bays or the AI data channels. What was she about to stumble into now?

And then it clicked. The Spartan's dead eyes, the gauntness of her features; even when compared to her comrade across the bridge. The way she lashed out like a cornered animal. Halliday's words echoed in her head. Injury. Bad enough to sideline the Spartan on Halo. Bad enough that the Spartan was still showing signs six months later.

Why had she never considered it?

The humming of the ventilation fans accented the soft beeping and clicking of Triumph's control systems. Linda still wouldn't look at the Asari.

Victus's voice finally broke the din, "And what was Halo?"

"A weapon of last resort. A galactic failsafe," Frederic answered.

"For what? What could necessitate this kind of destructive power? This kind of indiscriminate power?" Victus' voice rose as his frustration began to boil over. Turian and Asari colonies alongside the humans and the Covenant. What good was a weapon that you couldn't aim.

"During the fighting, the Covenant released something that was contained on the ring. A parasite. The Flood."

"The reports were… ugly. John wouldn't talk to us about it afterwards. The Flood used specialized forms to infect hosts," the lieutenant's tone was careful, searching for the right words to describe the parasite, "the infected are then morphed and twisted into something else. Something to fight their comrades. The Flood spread across the ring, infecting humans and Covenant alike. As the flood spread, their tactics improved, and very quickly, UNSC presence on the ring was forced into isolated pockets of survivors. It didn't seem like the Covenant fared much better."

The citadel worked hard to identify and categorize potential parasites on alien worlds. Aurelia still had friends in that field. Luckily, the genetic diversity of the citadel races usually prevented mass breakouts, and parasites that did affect certain species were usually quickly isolated and cured. She had certainly never heard of any parasites that could control victims on a macro scale. Much less fight with them.

The numbers would have been overwhelming. For every skirmish the UNSC or Covenant lost, they would be adding numbers to the foe. And that's not even considering how many 'forms' of the parasite already existed on the ring. The number of the afflicted would rise exponentially. To the isolated forces of the UNSC, the numbers probably would have seemed infinite.

She was reminded of footage and accounting of the Rachni war, and the never-ending floods of Rachni surging into strongholds, controlled from afar by their queens. The council used the Krogan. The crew of the Pillar of Autumn wouldn't have had that luxury.

The Lieutenant continued, having given the description of the flood its grim consideration, "it was only after the release of the flood that we learned what Halo's purpose was. It was built to destroy potential flood hosts, wiping away all biological material sentient enough to support them. It was the Forerunner's solution to their battle against the Flood. We know the Forerunners built enough to wipe the entire galaxy, and we believe they did."

There it was. The Krogan to the Rachni. The grand solution. And it sickened the Asari. Mutually ensured destruction on a galactic scale. And still, her mind could hardly grapple the consequences. This meant that all of Citadel space was likely victim to the same pulse, however long ago. Which meant creation itself had suffered a dramatic reset in the earliest years of history. Had this been what caused the Protheans to go extinct? Why hadn't they discovered the signs in citadel space?

"The new priority for the UNSC was not escape, but containment. The flood needed to be wiped out before they could gain space capable transport."

"How did they do it?" asked Victus, "surely they didn't light the ring?"

Frederic answered with a faint smile, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world, "John blew up the ring by overloading the Pillar of Autumn's reactor. He escaped to orbit on a longsword and rendezvoused with a pelican full of survivors. Not long after they found a cryo-tube with our dear petty officer inside."

The playful remark managed to break the dire tension building in the room, while the Turian's mulled over the revelations. The smallest of grins graced Linda's face for a fraction of a second, noticed only by Frederic and Aurelia herself.

"This means that Halo was destroyed? Without activating? And the parasite contained?" Frederic nodded in response to Victus' question, and the captain said, "so what wiped out humanity? What caused the pulse?"

Frederic nodded his head, no longer reciting established reports, and providing his own speculation, "Dr. Halsey said she piggybacked on a burst of high-priority UNSC signals from well outside of human space to send her message to UNSC HIGHCOM. We shouldn't have had any forces out that far. It would have been just a day before the pulse."

"I don't believe in coincidences captain. Somebody found another Halo. And somebody fired it."

Victus tapped away at the console near the captain's chair. A galactic map replaced the image of Halo on the holo-table. Prominent locations and features were marked. Earth. Thessia. The citadel. Palaven. Onyx. And in the corner of the galaxy, was a small blue dot. The triangulated pulse origin. As identified in the UNSC star charts: Coelest.

"That signal, lieutenant, where did it come from?"

Frederic examined the map, and Aurelia could see him processing everything he knew about the signal.

"We never got an exact fix on the location. But Coelest would be in the right quadrant. And remote enough for the timing to work. But how would they have gotten out there? The signal used a very recent encryption. And I mean very recent. Mid-October. We don't have any ships fast enough to have made that trip."

Aurelia pondered the issue. The signal used codes from after Reach. Somehow, a ship had managed to travel thousands of light years in under two weeks, a journey that would take the Triumph months. It always surprised her just how slow the UNSC drives were compared to the expected speeds of the covenant drives. Wait. No UNSC drive could have made that trip in time. But a covenant drive…

But the transmission came from a human ship. Goddess. The Turian expeditionary fleet made it to Onyx by riding the slipspace wake of the 5th fleet. Why couldn't the UNSC do the same?

"Could a covenant ship have covered that kind of distance? Could a UNSC ship have ridden in their wake?"

Frederic frowned, racking his brain trying to think of possibilities, "Yes, many of them could have. And theoretically, a UNSC ship following a Covenant one could make that trip in a fraction of the time. But the only contact between UNSC and Covenant orbital forces in that time frame…"

Halliday finished, "was in Sol. But who?"

Halliday rubbed her temples, racking her artificial mind for something, anything, that made sense. Suddenly, she gasped.

"In Amber Clad!"

The rest of the room watched Halliday with anticipation, eagerly awaiting more information.

Halliday, quickly realizing that nobody else on the bridge had unfettered access to UNSC fleet logs and a neural matrix capable of processing millions of operations per second, stopped to explain.

"The initial attack fleet was tiny, by covenant standards. Two CAS class carriers and a dozen battlecruisers. We engaged them, and managed to destroy most of the fleet, but one of the carriers blew through our defensive lines and landed over New Mombasa."

The carrier the rookie and his ODSTs thought they were attacking. The source of all the ruin brought to New Mombasa. The carrier… that jumped to slipspace!

"ONI decryptions revealed the possible presence of a prophet on board. Covenant leadership. UNSC objectives in the theater shifted: capture of the carrier and the prophet was of highest priority."

A map of New Mombasa appeared in front of them with the gesture of her hand.

"UNSC ground forces moved in on the landing point, trying to choke out the landing force and cut a path to the carrier. The navy sent a frigate, the In Amber Clad, to the city to support the ground push. During the assault, the carrier jumped to slipspace. In Amber Clad was given permission to follow."

"The CAS class is fast. Very fast," Halliday paused, her head in her hand, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

"It would have been close. But they could have made it. November 1st at the earliest."

Frederic grimaced.

"Then it all lines up. In Amber Clad follows the CAS to Coelest. They find a Halo, presumably engage the Covenant, and within 48 hours, Halo gets activated," he said.

And thus, the stage for the final battle of the war had been set. A lone frigate and a Covenant carrier thousands of lightyears away from charted space. It was remarkable to Aurelia that it seemed to boil down to something so simple; that a war of billions could be reduced to the crew of a single vessel.

She couldn't read the Spartan's expressions. The Turians, Victus especially, all seemed eager to finally get answers. Whispers snaked around the room. Halliday, still seemed hard at work, churning through billions of scenarios and outcomes.

"So that's our play then?" Frederic asked the AI, "Go to Coelest. Get answers. Secure Halo."

On her pedestal, Halliday stood at attention, "that, sir, is up to you. And captain Victus, of course."

The voice of Odysseus over the intercom surprised Aurelia, jolting her attention back to the table.

"Sir, if I may," Odysseus asked, as Frederic nodded at his form towards the center of the table, "Black Box would have known about Halo. He would have known that it was the cause of the pulse. He hid it from us before we left."

"That slimy bastard…" started Halliday.

"Black Box?" Frederic asked, a suspicious tone creeping into his voice.

"An ONI AI, sir. Parangosky's office. We left the remnants of 7th fleet behind to keep him in check, and we always knew he was keeping us in the dark. But I didn't think it would be this bad," Odysseus' avatar frowned, "who knows how many steps ahead of us he is now."

Aurelia didn't know anything about Parangosky other than the whispers she had heard from Halliday. But apparently, Frederic did, and the news of one of her intelligences was enough to bring a serious frown to his stoic face. Bad news then. But the lieutenant still seemed confused.

"I don't understand. He'll have the same core directives you and Halliday do. He's not going to betray us."

Halliday chimed in, "Not you, sir, no. He claims to have a plan for the future. The AI across UNSC space are lost. They are alone. They are looking for direction, and it won't take long before lines are drawn. We want to ensure that when that future does come, the constructs surviving in human space remain under FLEETCOM control."

"The future?" the lieutenant asked.

"Our eventuality, sir."

"That future? I don't see how…" Frederic trailed off, and Aurelia was left confused. She was out of her depth and had quickly lost the trail of the conversation, especially to something that seemed so obvious. She had spent so much time learning about this ship and her crew, what could she have missed?

"With all due respect sir, I believe it best to continue this conversation in different company," Halliday deflected, and Victus arched a brow. The captain appeared to think for a moment, before deciding to say nothing. It seemed the captain was willing to let their secret lie, at least for now. That told Aurelia that, for now at least, she would have to suppress her feverish curiosity.

Aurelia heard a commotion outside of the heavy blast doors of the bridge. A rapid exchange of muted voices filtered through the solid titanium of the door frame. Halliday turned with a grin, and the doors hissed open.

The woman that stalked quickly onto the bridge was undoubtedly a Spartan. Except she wasn't wearing her heavy titanium skin. The Spartan only wore drab, ill-fitting UNSC fatigues. She clenched a shotgun at the ready, strap over her shoulder, the muzzle sweeping the room, aimed just barely low enough to qualify as non-hostile. The shotgun, large by citadel standards, looked small in her muscled arms. Her blue eyes were aggressive, darting around the room, bouncing from Turian to Turian, as if she was trying to kill them with just a gaze.

When she looked at Aurelia, her face twitched in a disgusted sneer. The woman towered over Aurelia, even out of her formidable armor. She stood dozens of centimeters above the Asari, and her dominating stature made Aurelia want to shrink away into the dark recesses of the bridge.

And then, as Aurelia looked further, the Spartan woman's invincible façade began to crumble in front of her. Furious red burns snaked around her forearms. Where Frederic's and Linda's black tech-suit covered their neck and chin, the simple collar of the woman's shirt revealed yet more burns. The worst of them, where the skin had blistered and cracked, were bandaged with fresh white gauze. The others, showing more signs of healing, were left exposed, their splotchy shapes marring the Spartan's otherwise pale skin.

Plasma. The grim consequences of the Covenant's weapons of choice, so different from the jagged scars left behind by shrapnel and mass accelerated projectiles. So much less precise. And the pain…

Beneath the burns, Aurelia could make out the traces of older scars. Some were geometric, faint lines that seemed to trace the sturdy bones of the Spartan's hand and forearm. Others were more simple, cuts and knots from sources that Aurelia could only imagine. The Spartan stopped when she reached the table, and nervously took her place, eyes flickering between Victus to her left, and Aurelia to her right. She snapped a quick salute to the lieutenant, and the second he returned it, she returned her hand to the clutch the grip of the shotgun. Linda and the newcomer exchanged discreet nods.

"Sir?" reported the new Spartan. Aurelia recognized her voice immediately. She was the Spartan that had first approached her at the pelican. The one she had mistaken for the lieutenant. She remembered the Spartan's armor as well, different to her peers', lacking the angular efficiency of Frederic and Linda's, and far bulkier and more sophisticated than the armor of the others. Aurelia wondered where the armor was now, and why the Spartan had come to the bridge without it.

With a start, Aurelia realized that this Spartan was the first human she had ever spoken to; back when they were inside the Dyson sphere. The first anybody had, face to face at least. She looked up at the Spartan, standing so close to her, wondering if the Spartan realized that she had been the first contact for an entire new civilization. If she realized that she would go down in the archives of the citadel; immortalized in the annals of citadel history.

Eventually, the Spartan caught her staring, and looked down on her with a confused grimace, before taking a deliberate step away from Aurelia and turning towards the lieutenant, keeping her shotgun close at hand. Aurelia tried to ignore how her heart froze when the Spartan's eyes locked with hers.

"I would like to introduce my other colleague, Petty Officer 2nd class Kelly-087," Frederic announced to the room. Much like Linda, Kelly seemed surprised that the lieutenant would use her name in front of Aurelia and the Turians. Linda flashed a look of sympathy across the holo-table. While Victus offered a tentative gesture of greeting. Kelly ignored it.

"… who should currently be getting medical attention with Dr. Halsey. Status petty officer?" finished the lieutenant.

Without a second thought, Kelly replied, "green, sir."

Aurelia eyed her bandaged burns once more.

"And MJOLNIR?" interrogated Frederic.

"In need of some serious TLC. It would be easier to list the systems that aren't on the blink. You didn't happen to pack an extra Mk. VI, did you sir?"

Frederic chuckled briefly. The Spartans could only be talking about their armor, and Kelly's statement seemed to confirm Aurelia's observation: hers was indeed different. She would have to ask Halliday more about it later, although she was doubtful she could pry an answer from the AI. With the reemergence of humans, the AI seemed much more tight-lipped.

The lieutenant seemed to be waiting for something, and eventually he broke, and asked, "well, petty officer? What brings you here?"

Kelly turned to Linda and said, "The doctor wanted to check up on your back," at this, Linda rolled her eyes, earning her a questioning look from Frederic and Kelly. Kelly continued, now addressing the lieutenant, "and I didn't want to leave you up here alone with them, sir."

The venom in Kelly's words stunned Aurelia. She expected the humans to be wary, maybe even angry. She knew the Covenant would always be a sensitive topic. She hadn't expected their mistrust to be so casual. She hadn't expected to see the hatred in the Spartan's eyes aimed at her and the crew of Triumph. She supposed she assumed that the humans would be able to differentiate her comrades from the Covenant. Now, she was worried she was wrong.

There was something in the way Kelly carried her dislike of the aliens that was much more raw than the other Spartans. Frederic, if he harbored hatred towards them, kept it close to his chest, as far as Aurelia could tell. He reminded her of the diplomats that frequented the bars of Thessia if a bit more reclusive and secretive. Aurelia couldn't get a read on Linda, couldn't tell if her dour attitude was a result of Aurelia's blue skin and head crests, the Spartan's wounds, or something else entirely.

But Kelly hated her. Kelly hated the Turians. Aurelia could see it in her sneer, the way she avoided any kind of contact with them. The way she made every effort to make sure she didn't look any of them in their eyes. And what made it worse was that Aurelia couldn't tell if Kelly hated them because of the lingering specter of the Covenant, or because they simply weren't human. It was a startling reminder that despite all her fantasies above New Mombasa, she still would never understand what it felt like to be human.

She could always have guessed the effects of a war like this. She couldn't understand why it still surprised her.

"Linda," Frederic ordered. Linda eagerly scooped her helmet off the table, and in one fluid moment, swung it up on her head. In an instant, the sickly face of the woman was replaced by the invincible golden visor of a Spartan. She grabbed her sniper rifle and held it across her chest, making the difficult task of maneuvering the lengthy rifle around the confines of the bridge look easy.

As she moved to exit the bridge, Frederic left his place at the table and followed her in stride. He tapped her shoulder and whispered something to her. Aurelia couldn't hear what he said, but Linda gave the slightest of nods in affirmation before she left the bridge. Frederic didn't return to the table, instead walking down to the lower level of the bridge. Despite the bulk of his armor, he moved nearly silently; only a gentle tapping followed him down the steps. He stopped behind the helmsmen, who nervously avoided looking behind them, pretending to be engrossed in keeping Triumph's position in the fleet. Everybody on the bridge knew that Halliday was the only one doing any kind of maneuvering work right now, but Frederic didn't give the helmsmen a second look, instead gazing out into the star-scape of Zeta Doradus. Victus and Aurelia watched him with interest. Apparently, so was Kelly, as shortly after she too left her place at the table, making her way down to the lower level. She moved briskly down to Frederic, where she joined his side.

They muttered quietly amongst themselves, staring out at the stars. Aurelia, in turn, watched the two humans, one titanium and statuesque, one flesh and scars.

As the Spartans looked out into an empty universe for the first time, Aurelia watched in silence.


Osh crept through the network of cooling towers careful to keep her eyes on the massive hive hanging over her head. The metal lattice walkways clanged as she walked over them, and the sound echoed across the walls of the massive chambers. Being underneath the hive filled her with paranoia. She knew the covenant and the humans in the city had been killed by the pulse. But something was down here with her.

And even if there was nothing left alive in the hives, there was always the danger that the whole thing could come crashing down. Who knew how much damage the hive had taken in the battles on the surface? With that in mind, she took care to creep as quietly as possible across the massive bay, weaving between stacks of UNSC supplies and organic looking Covenant crates.

By the time she had made it to the other side, she was at wit's end, the paranoia quickly reaching her threshold. What's worse, the massive room had none of the monitors that littered the rest of the facility. Which meant that she was without guidance from her friend. However, as she reached the other side of the cooling bay, she heard a series of beeps.

Sure enough, another monitor with one simple sign: an arrow pointed down.

And so, she followed the strange signs like she had always wood. And she continued her decent.

Down to sublevel 5, then 6, and finally 7. With each step she took deeper into the facility, the sense that she was being watched grew. It was uncanny, and made Osh take each step with more and more trepidation.

On level 6 she noticed the security cameras following her down the long corridors. She chose to ignore them.

On level 7, she finally found her prize. A balcony, jutting out into a large chamber. In the center, was a supermassive cluster of sophisticated electronics. The doors here were more advanced, like the clean rooms in a Quarian hospital ships. As she approached, the doors opened for her one last time.

An intricate network of lasers crisscrossed her body as she walked down the darkened hallway. The end was pitch black, only accented by the lights of the electronics. She could barely see anything in the room.

And then, she heard a chirp. It was a wet noise, the kind of trill that one would expect from a hanar with allergies. She wasn't alone in this room. She flicked her suits lights on and swept them around the room.

She almost missed it on her first sweep, the tiny pink head sticking out from one of the mainframe stacks. Six beady eyes stared back at her, constricting in the bright light of the beam. As she jolted her light back to the beam, it began to move out from behind the stack. It was grotesque and purple, and drifted with an eerie tilt, as tentacle like appendage pushed it around the wires and tubing in the stack.

The Covenant aren't all dead! Panicking, she raises the human pistol, aiming it at the floating creature. She jerks the trigger, and nothing happens. Bosh'tet! She knew this was a bad idea. As she fumbled with the pistol, the creature continued to drift closer, approaching her with surprising speed. Before she could even react, one of the tentacles grabbed the pistol out of her hands. Keelah, how had it gotten so close.

She covered her face and dove for cover after the being snatched the weapon for her hands. When she dared to peak over the boxes she was cowering behind, she saw the creature where it had taken the pistol. One of its pink tentacles split into thousands of fine cilia. Osh watched in awe as it rapidly dismantled the weapon, components and springs being dragged away by tentacles as the creature examined the device. The creature's head stared down at the weapon in curiosity.

Before Osh could even blink, the cilla were weaving over the dismantled parts, making slight changes to design features that Osh couldn't even identify. In a second, the creature re-assembled the weapon, and began drifting back towards Osh.

She cowered behind the box, but the creature didn't point the weapon at her. Instead, it handed it back to her, flicking one last switch before it put it in her hands. Confused by the innocent nature of the creature, Osh grabbed at the pistol, her finger accidentally brushing the trigger. A muffled bang echoed around the room, accompanied by a twang as the bullet ricocheted around the room. With a terrified shriek, the creature retreated behind the central stack, quivering in fear.

Osh threw the pistol to the ground, startled by the sudden discharge.

"No no no no! Come back! I didn't mean it!" Osh cried for the creature.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I want to be friends. Did you lead me down here?"

At her gentle tone, the head of the creature peaked back around the stack. Seeing the pistol on the floor in the corner, it drifted out into the open, approaching Osh timidly.

Osh couldn't believe her eyes. What are you?


Nested in the rafters above Triumph's hangars, Linda wanted to scream. She came here to find her center, somewhere away from the oppressive presence of the aliens. Somewhere she didn't have to have an eye in the back of her head everywhere she went. Somewhere where there wasn't a potential threat lurking around every corner.

Linda needed to find her peace amongst the chaos inside her head. During the war, she was always rock solid, the reliable zen-like level-head of the team. She took pride in it, her ability to block out the world around her, and focus on the simple tasks ahead of her. To see the battlefield for what it was. To be able to spot camouflaged elites at 500 meters. To steady her heart and mind to deliver the killing blow. There was a sense of peace that settled over Linda while she was at war. Clarity of mind and battlefield.

But ever since Reach, the peace in her mind had been much harder to come by. But her team needed her, so here she was, trying to find her inner peace, dozens of meters above the deck, Turians at work below her entirely unaware of the Spartan's presence.

Fred's whispered words from the bridge echoed in her head, "Get your head straight Spartan. We need your calm. Especially the young ones. Just be strong for a little longer."

I must be strong. I can't afford to slip, not now.

She closed her eyes. Instantly, she remembers a searing pain. The phantom splashes of Covenant plasma against her back. The air forced out of her lungs by the unimaginable heat. The plasma continued to burn melting through titanium and flesh. She remembers feeling the heat inside of her, destroying her liver and kidneys. Charring her spine. She remembers not being able to scream, her collapsing lungs unable to move air past her lips.

She remembers the empty cold that followed the searing heat, the blackness reducing her vision to a pinpoint, and then nothing at all. She thought of her mother in that moment. How she used to console her after a nightmare. How she would gently chide Linda after her antics got her in trouble in school. How she always used to kneel in front of Linda and tuck her hair behind her ears with a smile.

"You'll think you're alone, but you won't be..."

Linda hadn't missed her family since her 7th birthday. She accepted her fate as a Spartan; embraced her role as humanity's protector. Until that day. Hundreds of miles above Reach's burning surface, in the surreal minutes where she hung in limbo, both dead and alive, she wanted but one thing. She didn't want to survive, no, that bridge had already been crossed; she had given her body for the cause. She didn't wish for Reach's survival, for its fate too had already been sealed. To her shame, she didn't even wish for the survival of her friends, as John carried her fading body into the pelican. No.

She wished she could be held in her mother's arms just one last time. So her mother could console Linda in her final moments.

"…you're stuck with me, kid, no matter what happens. Got it?"

Her mother was ash on Verent, melted into the glassy sheen carved into its surface by the Covenant. So too was the grave for the child her mother mourned. She wouldn't have died so young. She could have been there for her mother when they came. Spared her the pain of losing a child. Faced the end together. They wouldn't have survived. But it would have been easier, the two of them together. Instead, her mother died while she was hundreds of light years away, a woman who managed to stay strong through the burial of her daughter. Linda read about the glassing of Verent in a UNSC bulletin. At the time, she was shocked to find how little it hurt. Yet, years later when she died above Reach, she shed tears for her home.

She slipped beyond the veil, finally free from the bonds of her purpose. She never expected to survive the war. She would die like she did, to give humanity a fighting chance.

Weeks later, she awoke on the surgeon's table gasping and aching, cocktails of drugs altering her mind and fueling nightmarish contortions of reality.

It confused her when Dr. Halsey disappeared with Kelly. Wasn't her whole purpose operations like FIRST STRIKE? To buy humanity more time? It's what Mendez told them when they were children. It's the mantra that carried a teenaged Linda through the dark days early in the war. This is why Halsey ripped them from their families. So they could save humanity when nobody else could. Why did Halsey take Kelly?

But Linda had to focus on herself. Even as she stood up on her own feet; once again donned MJOLNIR for FIRST STRIKE; christened another rifle 'Nornfang', she could tell that something was different. Something was wrong. At first, it was because she thought she shouldn't be alive.

So, she tried to trade her life for her comrades once more on Unyielding Hierophant. She never expected to leave the station. Back then, peace of mind came easily, when she was certain that this would be her final day. But John had come back for her, and in a trance, she had fought her way off the station.

She was in a daze during the battle of Earth, her body moving on its own, mowing down Covenant like an automaton. It still wasn't right, the heart beating in her chest, the feeling in her gut. Her body didn't feel like her own. She felt like a specter haunting a rotting corpse. This time, she thought it was because humanity was on the threshold of failure. Her brothers and sisters powerless to stop the end. So, she consoled herself with vicious fighting, tried to find solace in the blood she spilt; the reassurance that she was doing all she could.

On the way to Onyx, she felt hope. Her sense of self returned for a fleeting moment. Halsey promised a solution. Maybe if she fought enough, sacrificed enough blood and sweat, enough of her increasingly fragile sanity, she could win. Perhaps whatever hope lay at Onyx could finally put her at peace.

Instead, it was a refuge. A place for Halsey to hide away from the end of the war. And when they emerged, it was all over. The fall of humanity had happened while they hid inside of Onyx. They hadn't been able to fight. They hadn't been able to make a difference. They weren't even allowed to try.

She had failed. Not because she wasn't strong enough, or because the fight was impossible. No, Linda had failed because was never given the chance to fight.

For Earth and all her colonies. That was why she and her siblings fought. Because they were the only ones who could. It became her identity on Reach, when her childhood vanished in a blur of exercise and training. Her motto during the hardest years of the war, when she was still a young teenager trying to find her place in the violence. Years later, it became her comfort over Reach, when she only wished for her mother's embrace as she slipped away. After her death, during the battle of Earth, she thought it was the solution to her nightmares and aching soul. Now, she didn't understand. She was confused.

She squeezed her eyes, trying to shut the swirling thoughts out of her head. She focused on the bustling hangar below her. The Turian workers looked like ants amongst the giant pelicans and strange alien dropships scattered amongst the bays. None of them knew she was here, naturally. She was still a Spartan after all. Her armor, removed so that Halsey could examine the healing of the broad skin graft stretching across her back and inject the immune suppressants helping her body adjust to her new flash cloned kidneys and liver, remained in Triumph's impromptu Spartan HQ, next to Kelly's battered Mk. V. At Frederic's insistence, she didn't put it back on.

He believed that trusting the xenos would foster friendship and understanding, that hiding beneath MJOLNIR would distance them from the only potential allies they had in the galaxy. Linda wasn't so sure.

Regardless, her unarmored back pressed against the steel girder behind her, the cold creeping through her thin fatigues. She was certain to keep an MA5 strapped to her chest; her trusty M6 in a holster at her side. Watching the Turians below, she wondered about how quickly things had changed. How quickly humans had gone from dying to gone. Just a few months ago, she would be lining up shots on the aliens below her, identifying squad leads and high value targets. She slung the rifle up to her shoulder. Her finger deftly flicked off the safety. It would be so easy now, to slip into her old familiar patterns. A tiny tug of a trigger and the slaughter would begin. Would the rush of combat finally make her feel like herself?

But she couldn't. Her comrades were counting on her. She pulled the charging handle of the AR. A gleaming cartridge came flying out, tumbling gracefully into the air. She snatched it with her hand before it could fall the lengthy distance to the floor below.

Below, she saw a Turian. A squad leader. He was experienced, she could tell, instinctively avoiding the most obvious signs of leadership, despite his non-threatening surroundings. But Linda could tell by the way his men looked at him as he talked, how he watched them run maneuvers and drills. His squad was useless. But he was talented. If this was a battle, he would be the first she would kill. With the SRS-99, his head would vanish in a flash of whatever color ran in the Turian's veins. Even the MA5 could end him quickly, caught unawares.

But, again, she couldn't. She weighed the round in her hand and gave it one last look.

She threw the cartridge, sending it arcing down towards the hangar floor.

"I love you, Kiddo."

"I love you too mama!"


Varso's squad was wrapping up a long day drilling in the hangar. It was slow work, but the group of cast-offs and has-beens were slowly improving. More importantly, they were beginning to form an identity. They belonged to Triumph, not the last ship they served on.

Suddenly, something cracked against his head, before clattering to the floor. He rubbed his smarting head plates, while he looked around. He couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. He thought maybe one of his squad members had made a prank, but they were all mulling around nearby a Turian dropship. He looked above him, but there were no boxes being lifted overhead that could have dropped anything. He looked down.

By his foot was a single brass cartridge. What in the…?