Wargreymon X had no issue giving Cassandra the play-by-play that went down between the Gettysburg and the Insurrectionist base. Admiral Whitcomb, in all of his wisdom, thought it'd be a good idea to bluff the Innies and use up their last warhead to show that the ship was still armed and loaded. It had gotten them a meeting, but Cassy couldn't help but feel that it was going to bite them in the rear.

"Cassy, the Captain wants you to check something in the system," Cortana informed her over the COMs.

The Tamer wasted no time in diving into the network and met up with her partners she had pulled out earlier. No one said a thing, but her partners' use of hand gestures told her something was amiss.

Magnamon motioned her to follow and he showed her a tiny breech in their firewall. A quick glance told her this wasn't made by a lone Digimon. This was done by a hacker; a very inexperienced hacker.

"Watch out!" Herissmon tackled her out of the way of an attack. A fireball hit the area she had once stood and left a decent sized scorch mark.

Wargreymon X was already charging toward the direction the attack came from. Cassy quickly brought out Metalgarurumon X.

"Who's there?" She shouted, mad and ready for a fight. Another fireball came at them and Wargreymon X and Metalgarurumon X fired back in the general direction. Someone screamed and Cassy got a glimpse of who was attacking them.

It was a kid close to her age and an Dracomon. The kid, a dark skinned boy with short dread locks and wearing shabby clothes, looked wild-eyed and clearly didn't expect to run into another Tamer. And she recognized this kid.

"Cole Train?"

"Wha—? Cassy?!" Cole said in disbelief. "What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you that!" Her partners stood down and came back to her side, but they were weary of Cole's appearance. "Why are you here? How?"

"Cassy, have you found anything?" Captain Keyes spoke over the communications channel Datamon had set up earlier.

"Hold on, Captain. I need a moment," she said quickly. "Cole, how did you get here?"

"Well, my family and I managed to get off of Reach," he started, "but we got separated at the port. The ship I was on came here after making a few jumps, and I've been stuck here since. No one was willing to get me to another port and no ships were leaving, until your….ship came along and I figured I could hitch a ride in the network until we got somewhere."

"That's when you tripped our security measures and ran into us. Dude, you should have said something! We could have blasted you to bits without knowing it was you!"

"Well, I had no idea you were still alive! And you still have a story to tell, so get to it!"

"Fine," she sighed and began to explain how she got thrown into the Pillar of Autumn, her adventure on the Halo ring, and everything leading up to them locating the Innie base near Eridanus II.

"Holy crap, girl," Cole said, flabbergasted by everything she told him. He rubbed his face, and Cassy got a look at his altered Digi-Bracelet. His was now black and blue with a blue Crest.

"Wait, when did you get a Crest?" She asked.

"Huh? This weird symbol? It just appeared a few hours ago. Why?"

"I found the Crest of Courage in the Halo's network. Are you sure nothing weird happened or you didn't stumble into some old network when that Crest appeared?"

Cole looked just as befuddled as she felt in that moment. This was setting off many alarms in Cassy's gamer brain and she was sure her friend was feeling the same now that he had some more information regarding Crests and what she had learned of them so far. Every game they've played taught them to never trust mcguffins just suddenly showing up.

"Cassy, whatever you're doing, you need to wrap it up now," Cortana informed her over their channel. "We've got Covenant inbound."

"Covenant?!" Exclaimed Cole. "And who's that?"

"I'll explain later. Captain, you need me to do anything?" She wasted no time in getting in touch with the bridge.

"Just make sure we're not boarded digitally, Cassy," was the short response she got. "Other than that, stay out of trouble."

"You got it," she turned to her team and said, "You heard him. Battle stations everyone!"

Captain Keyes considered his options as the conjoined ship moved to intercept the Covenant ship. They didn't have a nuke thanks to Admiral Whitcomb's bluff tactic earlier, and their plasma cannons were damaged. Lieutenant Hikawa was about to make a suggestion when they all heard Cassandra over the COMs.

"Datamon, what the hell did you do?! Shields up! Shields up now!"

"What's going on, Cassandra?" Keyes asked, but Cortana was the one to answer.

"Datamon, in all of his wisdom, thought it was a good idea to test out a virus he created, and the results are going to be more explosive than expected."

"Explosive?"

The Covenant ship they were going to fight suddenly collapsed in itself and then exploded in a shower of molten metal and dust. The entire bridge fell silent as they all processed what just happened.

Cassandra and Herissmon appeared on deck with another kid and a dragon like Digimon, both kids and Digimon were singed and looking absolutely done with everything.

"Okay, first, this is Cole and his partner Dracomon, they decided to stow away in the ship's network to get back to civilization. Cole's a Tamer like me, and he's just as fed up with Datamon as I am.

"Cortana, can you give them an explanation as to what Datamon made and what it did?"

"Go decompress, kid. If I could, I would strangle Datamon right now for this too."

Now everyone was curious as to what ticked off Cortana of all people. Just what did Datamon do? They watched Cassandra, Cole and the Digimon leave the bridge in complete silence and then all eyes went to the AI's avatar near the Captain's chair.

"Datamon created a virus to attack the power system of a Covenant ship, but he forgot to factor in the fact that he'd be connecting our ship's network to the enemy ship's network and that there would be energy based feedback when the virus worked it's magic. Cassy and Cole were able to shield our network from being fried and the Digimon are making repairs to systems that got damaged."

"It was a good idea, and now I can refine—"

They heard Lilithmon smack the tiny Digimon while yelling, "How about no!"

"Uh, Captain, we're being hailed by the Innies." Ensign Lovell informed the Captain. Govenor Jiles's, the leader of the Insurrectionist hideout, voice came over COMs just as they noticed tiny ships head toward them.

"Well, Admiral, it looks like we owe you some repair work." The Govenor said as the ships were identified. Captain Keyes and the rest of the present crew silently swore to keep what transpired a secret till the day they died.