Cassandra looked into the golden visor of the unknown Spartan towering over her. A moment earlier, she had nearly been pulled into a portal and this Spartan fell out just before the portal closed. The behemoth's armor was scorched and his tech suite had a decent sized hole in it, exposing burnt skin.
"What is going on here?" the Spartan asked, his voice surprisingly young, and snapped Cassy out of her thoughts.
"Dude, you need medical attention!" she pointed to his wound and looked back over to the crowd of Marines behind her. "Where's a medic?"
Her pointing out the obvious wound seemed to have got the soldiers' attention and they all moved out of the way for a medic and a technician to step forward and get to work. Cassy was pulled back during the shuffle, but soon she made her way back to her 'spot' with another medic checking her throbbing left shoulder.
How she didn't register the pain earlier, she had no idea.
"Your shoulder was almost dislocated," the medic informed her. "It's going to be tender for a while, so try not to move it much until we can get back to UNSC space."
A loud beep came from her Digi-Bracelet and Cassy knew the over worked Seraphimon wanted to assist.
"No, Seraphimon," she said exasperated. "You need your rest too. I'll be alright, and don't make me sic Lillithmon on you if you don't get some sleep!"
Woo-beep! Seraphimon fled off the screen and a giggling Herissmon took his place.
"I guess Lillithmon is the group mom," the medic chuckled, not asking a question. He reminded her to take it easy with her left arm, applied a compress to the wounded area and then left to tend to his other duties.
Cassy took to pacing around the room, staying out of the way of soldiers doing their jobs and staying away from the covered bodies lining the far side of the room. This was the first time in a while she had the chance to process everything that's happened to her, and there was no way she could sit back down and twidle her thumbs after practically sleeping for twenty plus hours. It didn't help that Madrigal's...death, the mad dash through the Halo's network, and the nightmare from earlier kept replaying in her head.
She stopped and realized something about the nightmare. She had never seen the Flood herself, being unconscious during an encounter or isolated from the parasite in a network, and her point of view was from that of Uncle John's. Why did she have a dream through his eyes? Did she somehow get data from him while she was in his armor?
"You okay, Cassandra?" Omegamon's voice got her attention, and she realized she stopped in front of the same terminal she tried accessing earlier.
"Yeah. Omegamon, would it be possible if I somehow got data from Uncle John?"
"Hmm?" It took the Royal Knight a full moment to give her a response. "We might need to direct this question to Cortana as she's more knowledgeable concerning the MJOLNIR armor. What prompted this?"
She told him of her nightmare and her thoughts on it. Her second strongest partner gave her his undivided attention and did not interrupt her once.
"We'll need to ask John if he's had any odd instances like yours," he said once she was finished. "This is strange, but it is possible you two exchanged data since the armor links up with his neural implant and you were stuck in his armor's computer for hours."
"I didn't even think of the neural implant," Cassandra began to nibble on her thumb as she began to mull over this new bit of information. She knew a little bit of what a neural implant did thanks to her adopted dad, and now that she thought of it the unknowing exchange of data wasn't that farfetched. Add in her unstable condition rendering her unable to block incoming data at the time and they had the perfect storm for unforeseen data leaks.
She stretched her arms and noticed something unrelated to her discussion with Omegamon. Her injured arm was glowing and no longer hurt.
"Seraphimon, I did warn you." She growled out and looked back to her bracelet. She raised her right hand and slammed her palm against the screen, sending her overworked partner back to his card and force him to rest. "Go the frick to sleep!"
Captain Keyes waited for Admiral Whitcomb to speak. He has just finished giving his report of what happened during his and his crew's time on the Halo construct, not leaving out Cassandra and her abilities that got them a treasure trove of alien data, and Cortana and Wellesly verified everything he said. The Master Chief would have been here as well with what was left of the Spartans to amend the abriged report the Admiral recieved from him earlier, but the Spartan in question was recieving medical treatment after repairing a sabatoged line during their brief jump in slip space. Two of the five additional Spartans were lost during that time along with a Pelican and Polaski.
"Is this Cassandra able to verify your report, son?" the Admiral finally spoke, clearly still in disbelief of everything he had heard. "And why did the Master Chief leave out her involvement?"
"Would you have believed him if he had told you?" he retorted. "We didn't even know of her abilities until she did a demonstration and brought out her partner."
"As for verifying her involvement..." Cortana chimed in with a hint of a smirk in her tone as all the stations on the bridge beeped and the information displayed on the screens were suddenly translated into English. "I think her work speaks for itself."
In a flash of light, the civilian child appeared to Keyes's right with her partner latched onto her right arm.
"Cortana said you needed a demonstration, Captain?" the girl said with a grin and her Digimon friend giggled.
"Thanks for the translation, Fireball," Ensign Lovell called out and quickly ducked as one of her shoes flew close to where his head had been. He tossed her shoe back to her with a chuckle. "It's good to see you back to normal too, kid."
"Ha ha ha, very funny, Lovell." She slipped her shoe back on, shooting a glare as the Ensign, and then noticed the three Spartans behind him and the Admiral. Keyes wondered if she knew any of these Spartans like she did with the Master Chief, or if she was confused to see more soldiers in the same type of armor. "I think I need to be filled in on a few things, but first things first: shift change! Omegamon, Alphamon, break time!"
"Wait! Is that really a good idea right now?" Keyes watched her bracelet device flash twice and she got out three cards to replace the two powerful Digimon.
"They've been out for roughly four days straight," she said, plugging in the cards one at a time. "Even Royal Knights need their beauty sleep. Wargreymon X and Magnamon can take over security detail for Wellesley and Datamon can help Cortana comb over the data we got from Halo."
"That would be very apreciated, Cassandra," Cortana said. "And he's already verified something I decoded earlier when we hooked up with the Gettysburg."
"Wow. That's a new record for you, Datamon," Cassandra quirked and eyebrow as a hologram of the Digimon in question appeared on Lieutenant Hikawa's station. "Find anything interesting?"
"Does the fact that the Covenant know the location of Earth count as interesting?" the small Digimon asked and was met with dead silence. Everyone was staring at the cybernetic Digimon, faces drained of color.
"Say what now?" Cassandra broke the silent spell and Keyes stepped forward.
"Cortana, explain," he commanded. "How do you know this?"
"Do you recall the data you and your crew collected from Cote d'Azur several months ago?" the smart AI began and explained how she had cracked the code to understand the data. It had been a list of coordinates, one being the location to Halo, another for Reach, and one for Earth. She went on to report her findings in tapping into the Covenant communications array and discovered plans to rendezvous at a station called the Unyielding Hierophant and then jump to Earth.
"This is bad," Cassandra muttered.
"Understatement of the century, kid," said Whitcomb, calm and already mulling over the information. "Before we can do anything else, we need to do repairs on both ships, and that requires more man power and materials."
"Where did we drop out at, anyway?" Herissmon asked and Datamon brought up a holographic map display in the middle of the bridge. The combined ships were highlighted in an area between three star systems.
"Two star systems are completely uninhabited, and the other was glassed back in 2530," said Whitcomb with a sigh. "We're completely on our own out here."
"At least we have the Covenant Huragok working on repairs with our engineers," Datamon informed him. "They are currently working alongside the crew to get the propulsion systems back up enough to get the ships moving. There are areas outside the ships that the Huragok cannot get to, but our engineers are working on those areas to the best of their abilities.
"On another note, I've uploaded a firewall to keep the Huragok from gaining access to any sensitive data in any UNSC hardware. Which is where I need Cassandra's assistance."
"How so?" Cassandra tilted her head.
"I need you to make sure this program holds firm in Covenant coding by running a few battery tests with Herissmon. I have a simulation of a Huragok accessing data ready for you to test with."
She wasted no time jumping back into the Truth and Reconciliation's network and Keyes spoke, "Datamon, that was the most blatant load of bullshit I've heard so far in my military career."
"The Huragok are living computers, Captain. The test runs are a legitimate need for security purposes," the Digimon said with no indication of sarcasm or any tells of a lie. Keyes had initially thought the mechanical looking creature was just making busy work for the civilian, but this new fact made it clear that Cassandra was going to be needed to keep these alien engineers out of sensitive data. "The same will need to be done for the MJOLNIR armor suits once the ships' databanks are secured. Cassandra should be done with her task within an hour. In the mean time, I will be assisting Cortana and Wellesley in decoding the data from the Halo construct and cataloging it for further study." With that, the hologram blinked away.
"How...?" Whitcomb tried to find the words for all of the questions going through his mind and was failing, just like Keyes and everyone else did when they were shown just how fast Cassandra and her partners worked.
"From what I understand, Cassandra's partners are still active even in storage and exchange data with each other to stay up to date on current events," he explained. "Datamon has more than likely been working on this firewall program for hours before he was brought out, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's got more tricks ready to go if something happens."
"How did she even get access to all of...this, sir?" one of the Spartans asked. He had no way to differentiate them unless they spoke, but Keyes had to guess it was 104 who asked the question.
"You will have to ask her that. I didn't even think to ask her how she befriended a number of digital lifeforms as we had bigger things to worry about."