Chief watched quietly as the Engineer girl, Sara, built up a small home by the side of the mountain for them to stay in. Utilizing a tool attached to her arm that resembled a small holographic computer and 3D Printer, the woman assembled the walls of the structure, the wooden supports and the planks meant to withstand the elements. Above them, clouds obscured the peaks of the mountain where the Dawn lay embedded, hiding the old girl from view for now.

Cortana hummed a tune as she seemed to be running diagnostics on the Spartan's suit. Sara seemed to be quite at ease working as she was, simply setting them up a place to lay low. The Chief stepped up and asked, "Are you sure you don't need help?" To which the Engineer gave a thumbs up. Feds really weren't that talkative, Chief thought, but then again, neither was he.

He had to wonder if she was the same as him in some ways. She had the mannerisms of a soldier that had been active duty for long enough. From what he'd gotten about the Federation, they were once one of the governing human nations of the Galaxy as a whole, before a Great Collapse of some kind caused them to be stranded at the far edges of Human-controlled space. They didn't know what caused the collapse, however. Some hoped it was just a communications issue. Others acted like they knew it was and told everyone that their standing orders remained the same:Keep the world pacified and await further orders.

Others still, like Sereniz, the officer Sara had mentioned was in charge of this place, had gone a bit over-the-top with this. Admittedly, they were apparently the mild part of the RimWorld's many warring factions. There were Tribals that their group had dealt with, there were the Wastelanders who lived in the hellscapes of the Old Ruins of the place and there were several other factions that had fought in what was historically referred to as 'The Mechanoid Wars' alongside the Feds, then there were various other stranger, seemingly smaller factions, like one called 'The VOID'.

Whatever the VOID was, it seemed as though they and their comrades had a propensity for fighting and/or pissing off just about everyone. Even the remnants of the local 'Imperial' presence that the Feds were in some sort of Forever War with. There was also the added issue of various xenotypes of gene-engineered humans, plus those aforementioned Mechanoids and it suddenly felt like John was a little in over his head.

As he watched the girl finish up their little shack in the side of the mountain, he walked over to help her set up the doors. Thankfully, Spartans knew a little bit about constructing certain things, so building the doors, even without her specialized toolset, went relatively quickly. The assembly of the doors to the hinges, he left to her and she'd gotten it done incredibly quick, too.

Entering the place, the Chief also found a table off to the side, filled with paper that the girl had with her, as well as a couple pens and some other miscellaneous science stuff. Cortana spoke, "Seems like she's pretty smart. Then again, guess it comes with the territory of being a Combat Engineer," with a smile. There were also a pair of bunks, but the Chief wasn't sure how a wooden bed was supposed to hold him up of all people.

Sara saluted and asked, "Well, sir? What do you think?"

"Good work," The Spartan complimented, which got a small smile out of the otherwise distant girl. He watched her walk over to the research table that she'd set up and start quickly working on something. In the meanwhile, he turned off his helmet's speakers and asked Cortana, "Do we have enough supplies to last us until we can set up farming if we go up to grab things from the Dawn?"

"We should be fine, yeah. Ammo, food, spare parts, water," Cortana shrugged, "I think we can find it all. Heck, might even find us a couple of Warthogs to roll in, if not some Mongooses."

The Spartan nodded at that, then asked, "... Do you want me to tell her?"

"About me?" She chuckled.

He replied with another quick nod, to which Cortana shrugged and said, "May as well. We're gonna be stuck together for the foreseeable future, after all. Plus, I can potentially help her with the Research she's doing..." and the Spartan, with the approval given, approached Sara. She looked at him after building herself a torch to hang on the wall so she could see better, then paused.

"Something I can help you with, sir?" She asked, a bit wary. The Spartan shook his head.

He told her, however, "Since it seems we're stuck together for the time being, it means we'll probably be cooperating in everything from defense to the upkeep of our newfound base. To that extent, I'm going to be transparent if you promise you'll do the same," and he waited. She tilted her head forward, affirming that, yes, she will gladly cooperate with him. To that, he pulled Cortana's chip out from his helmet and showed it to her.

The woman blinked, staring down at the crystalline storage device that contained the AI persona. She gasped when Cortana's form materialized ahead of her from a flurry of pixels, taking a step back. Her hand hovered almost instinctively over the plasma pistol she had on her belt, but she stared at the Avatar. The AI smiled and said, "Howdy there, Sara. I'm Cortana, Chief's personal AI... The big man figured a little trust's in order for us to work together, so he decided to show me to ya... Maybe let me offer myself up in helping you research."

The woman swallowed, then nodded and smiled, "Wow... An actual AI. The Federation usually regulates AI due to the fighting we've been doing against the Mechanitors and their troops, but..." and she almost seemed enthralled by the AI's form. She looked up at the Chief and asked, "You have a personal AI? Does every single member of your unit have one?"

"No. Cortana's..." The Spartan sought the right word and found it in the simplicity of stating, "Special. She's a 'Smart' AI..."

"One with a lot of uses outside of helping Chief's armor run. Do you want some help with the Research?" The AI offered, crossing her arms. Sara swallowed empty, looked up at the Chief to get his approval and could only crack a smile when he gave it. Gently taking the chip, the woman summoned the same strange holographic/hardlight device she'd utilized to construct the base's exterior and slotted the chip into the one visible connector port.

Cortana whistled and said, "Okay. This is pretty nifty..." as she appeared next to the girl, utilizing a portion of the projector's capabilities to appear next to them. She told Chief, "It's a three-dimensional printer of a sort that combines multiple tools. It can help with mining, research... Basically anything really important. And then it can print or help with the manufacture of various items needed for it. The walls, as an example, are a template wall with inner reinforcements that can be built out of any material..."

"Wow..." Sara smiled at that, "I think I'm gonna enjoy it with you two, heh. Seeing someone this smart that's not a normal human is a breath of fresh air. I get someone to talk to that isn't just a Jarhead... No offense, sir," She then gave an awkward smile toward Chief.

Chief agreed, "Cortana's special. I told you," and that got the AI's avatar to turn pink a little as she laughed shyly. Another quirk that was unexpected of an AI was to get flustered. Sara smirked at that and looked up at the Chief, before shrugging and nodding. The two women turned about to work, while the Chief stated, "I'll patrol the outside. Keep tabs on possible hostiles... Maybe find some wild seeds or something we can grow crops with."

"Sure thing, Chief," Cortana smiled.

"As you say, sir," Sara replied, nodding her head. The women watched the Chief depart, exiting out of the sliding doors with his rifle in his hand. Cortana, meanwhile, sighed and shook her head, smiling a little at her partner's antics. Sara told Cortana, "Chief seems like a straightforward type of man. He certainly doesn't mince words..." before Cortana's avatar glowed pink again. The Engineer chuckled as she turned back to her work, then told her, "You two seem like a great team."

"We've been at it for the past... Maybe eight years of our lives?" The AI replied, not making a mention of the fact that a good chunk of those years, Chief spent in cryo due to them finishing their fight. Sara whistled as she went on to research, while Cortana said, "Oh... Well, that's interesting. This thing has a database of blueprints, but it's incomplete. That what you're researching?"

The woman nodded with a smile, "Yeah... I stole it out of a storage area from other Engineers, because I figured I'd need to be able to build myself some form of temporary housing while out here. Shame of it is, most of the knowledge is locked due to a malfunction, so I'm trying to find ways to unlock it. I mean, we have stuff like Geothermal generator blueprints here, but..."

Cortana nodded, "Yeah. I mean, I can help you unlock most of the stuff, but I can tell it's gonna take us a while to get through the quote-unquote 'tech tree' to have everything we need," And she hummed. She continued, "Could potentially help us power our base, too. What we really wanna get into is wiring so we can maybe run a wire up to the Dawn."

"That the ship you and Chief came in on? It's nearby?" The woman asked. Cortana smiled, then, through a special link, painted a NAV point right on top of them. Sara blinked, then stood to her feet and walked outside, only to look up to the peak of the mountain they'd built the base next to. Her jaw dropped at the sight of the ship that was embedded within the rock face.

Chief told her, "The fact it's visible is a security risk," as he approached, MA5 in hand. Sara looked over to the Chief and nodded, then blinked as she saw his rifle. He spoke, "There's more aboard the Dawn, but we have to get up there and retrieve them and the ammo. We'll do so in due time, but I'm trying to ensure that our perimeter is secure for now... I found a few seeds."

"S-Should be useful for future farming..." The girl replied, stunned. She grinned widely as she looked back up at the ship, one thought running through her mind:NEW GUN.

Cortana had felt the change in her pulse and had to admit that it was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. She didn't know Sara's full backstory, so she couldn't assume much, but an Engineer probably enjoyed weapons quite a lot. Especially stuff she hadn't seen before. It was no wonder that, even with how battered her pistol looked, it was still working. She probably knew the ins and outs of maintaining something like it.

Chief, meanwhile, knew better than to question it. If she wanted a new weapon and some armor, they'd retrieve it from the ship the moment they had time to. In the meanwhile, he handed the girl the seeds, stowed his rifle and walked over to start tilling the land. A part of him remembered what that usually meant:Creating neat rows into which the seeds could be placed in nice, fertile soil.

Once the seeds were scanned and found to be replicable, the plants they were from being some form of strange-growing Rice that didn't need the normally wet paddies to grown in, the Spartan and the Engineer got to planting. Afterward, the Chief had decided to continue his patrol outside while Sara and Cortana worked for a while longer on researching basic power generation and some lights.

The Spartan now stood outside, on watch, as the clouds above faded and the starlit sky appeared. Formations of stars that he had never seen before glowed, speckling the otherwise dark dome with bright lights. Whatever lay beyond the surface of this planet was unreachable for them as of right now. When he entered the base for a moment ,he saw that Sara had passed out on her bunk.

Cortana's chip lay on the research bench. He approached it and took it, sliding it back into his helmet, to which Cortana spoke, "Aaah. Back home for a bit," with a chuckle. She quipped, "Miss me?"

"Like fresh air," The Spartan replied in a similar tease, which got Cortana to let out a whine of embarrassment.

"Whyyyy..." The AI sighed, rubbing her face, "Nevermind... Heh. You changed a bit..."

"Someone told me I should be more human..." He replied in a murmur as they continued their patrol. Indeed, Cortana had asked him to act a bit more human toward her and anyone else around them. Well, no, in truth, she asked him who was the human and who, the Machine, but if he took it as 'try to be a little less robotic when talking to people', she wasn't about to complain. Especially if it was this.

... Though she didn't expect him to... Was he flirting? Was he actually? Or was he just praising her for the sake of praising in front of their newfound comrade. Sara seemed to have understood it as simple praising, maybe. She didn't take it as flirting or anything either. It probably wasn't flirting. Yeah, no way John of all people would be flirting with her. Why was this occupying like 90% of her processing power? She switched thought.

Chief, worried, asked, "... Are you okay? You just went quiet on me for a whole minute."

"S-Sorry..." The girl replied, her voice slightly higher on pitch. She cleared her nonexistent throat and said, "What were we talking about...?"

"I think the conversation stopped at 'me being more human'," The Chief replied calmly as they walked. He started to say something, but paused. Cortana almost asked him what was wrong until she heard and felt him switch his rifle from safe to full. He maintained his patrol pattern, though, slowly walking as to not alert whatever enemy he'd spotted or felt approaching.

Weird. His Motion Tracker wasn't picking up anything. Still, she didn't want to question the Spartan's gut instincts. She knew better than that, so, upping the suit's audio-visual sensors so she could see, too, she listened. The faintest whirr of mechanical parts filled her ears, but it was so quiet it might as well not even have been there. The Spartan cast a sideways glance as he delved deeper into the cover of the forest near their base.

Whatever creature it was seemed to forego not being spotted or did not know when John looked to his left that he had seen it. It charged forward, its cape fluttering in the wind and revealing an amalgamation of human and machine as it drew a bent knife the size of a machete. A kukri. Chief raised his hand and blocked the strike, then disarmed the would-be assassin and looked it right in the eye.

One eye. Scarlet. It glowed balefully, glaring at the Spartan ad he lifted his MA5 and opened fire. Bullets sparked the body of the machine as it vanished into darkness, its white and red shrouded by what seemed to be an adaptive camouflage cloak. The Spartan heard a second come in from the right and kicked center-mass, sending it flying into the tree behind and causing it to drop its blade.

He put the barrel of the weapon straight to its face and squeezed, bursting the robotic eye and splattering quick-congealing dark-red blood on the trunk of the tree. The blood stained white armor that had the scarlet of the Federation's Bion units. Sara had told him of Bions, the man-machine abominations employed as part of the enemy's Peacekeeper corps. These must've been assassin-variant Bions equipped with some of their best stealth gear.

He listened in for the next one, with Cortana noting, "John! Distant energy discharge! Take cover!"

The Spartan spun about, taking cover behind a tree as a scarlet bolt of overheated plasma struck the trunk farther behind, exactly where his head would've been. The Spartan murmured, "Sniper... They're hidden from our Motion Tracker..."

"Not completely..." The AI replied as she boosted the MT's power while reducing its range. John finally marked the next incoming assassin just as it raised its blade to strike at him. He caught it by the throat, threw it to the floor and slammed the heel of his armored boot into its throat. A sickening crunch filled the air as the strange white alloy armor shattered under blunt force trauma. The AI said, "Interesting... Kinetic energy seems to be their undoing. Their armor's meant to take plasma shots, not bullets or fists."

"So, hit them hard and fast..." The Spartan replied, exchanging the half-empty magazine in his rifle for a fresh one. Cortana hummed affirmatively, to which the Spartan threw an empty magazine forward. The sniper's rifle flashed as the shot nailed clean through the tin and stopped in the dirt, boiling it to glass. He lifted the knife of one of the assassins off the floor and spun it around in one hand, then listened in.

"Right," Cortana quipped. The Spartan took a step back, dodging a swing from a bladed weapon of the Fed assassin unit, before planting the tip of one of his dead comrades' blades into his face. The monster roared in pain, collapsing as its eye cracked. Plasma bursts followed up, the Chief feeling them hit his armor. Cortana stated, "Well, we know they're close to Covvie plasma weapons in power! They're draining the shields!"

Chief took cover as bolts of plasma struck around him. The tree caught several as his Motion Tracker finally pinged maybe half-a-dozen enemy toopers. These ones were humans. He could hear them communicating verbally, even if their coms were scrambled by the vocoders in their helmets. He poked out, dropping to one knee and firing a burst at the first man. Blood spattered the men in the back, staggering one of them.

He stood up and started running to the right, firing his weapon like it was stabilized at the enemy. They tracked, but several caught bullets as they tried firing back. Two were injured, while a third took a bullet to the skull. The two others that were trying to flank him tracked and shot him in the back, causing his shields to flare. He was going for the Sniper, though, so they could wait a hot minute.

The thunderclap of a plasma round striking one of the men as they moved to try and intercept him filled the air. He looked back to see that Sara had awoken. Starting to move forward, running, too, more specifically, the young woman plucked up a plasma rifle from the floor, as well as what little ammo was on the man, then opened fire. She nodded to the Chief, well aware of what he was going after, then said, "I'll cover you, sir!" as she ducked behind cover and fired her rifle at the enemy.

Chief nodded back, then surged forward toward the hostile sniper. A bolt shot past his head as he tilted it, striking behind him. Cortana spoke, "That one was a little hotter than the rest. Nice dodge," before watching the Spartan jump, flipping forward and keeping his MA5 trained on the Sniper now that his cloaked silhouette became clear. Stunned, the shooter could only look up as the first muzzle flash signaled a shot.

The bullet pierced his skull, followed by a flurry of rounds cutting through his armor and into his body. The Spartan landed graciously behind the corpse, then caved its chest in just to make sure. He plucked up the sniper, shouldered it and scoped in. The holographic sight was a burning scarlet with a mini-rangefinder and computer-assisted aiming not too different from their own.

Sighing, the Spartan shouldered the weapon properly again and aimed for the first Conscript's head. Squeezing the trigger, he felt the rifle spit the shot out, the crucible at its core warming to a dull white as it fired. The burst of energy struck the leading infantryman's head, causing it to snap to the side it was melted through. The soldier collapsed, causing the other two men, one of which seemed to be an officer, going by the cape, to stagger.

Chief aimed for the officer and fired, nailing him right in the giant scarlet eye that acted as his visor, sending the man tumbling to the floor, dead. The last of them began to run, with Chief aiming for him and squeezing the trigger... Only for the weapon to sputter and die. He looked at the crucible eye on the Weapon's center and saw that it had partially melted. He approached Sara after dumping the rifle, then asked, "Did we wake you up?"

"Yeah," The girl sighed, "Disappointed you started a party without me, but..." she noticed the corpses of the assassins on the floor, "I guess Peacebringers don't like the Party going loud. Must've come after yours truly..." before pausing as she heard a groan. She gasped, looking over to see a survivor, a simple soldier, before preparing to go to him. Chief stopped her by grabbing her arm, but she said, "It's fine... That's a simple conscript..."

She walked over to the man, grabbing some meds from one of the dead. Going on to tend to the man, she took his helmet off and paused, then smirked, "McKay..."

"Reyner..." He coughed, "I'll be damned... You have one hell of a guardian buddy," and he looked at the Chief as he secured the perimeter.

She shrugged and said, "He saved me from a squad of Bion Peacemongers," in a murmur as she patched his wounds up. A leg injury, a gut shot that pierced the armor and a broken arm she put in a splint. She told him, "Hope you're not planning on going back to Sereniz's base. They'll have your head for failing to put me down... I like you rookies. You bring color to the room, but..."

"Nah," He shook his head, "Fuck that... I was planning on leaving anyway, just got 'voluntold' to do this."

"Yikes," She winced, "Where you heading?"

"... I'd stay here, though going by the shack you folks have," He looked over to the house pressed against the wall of the mountain, "Might just be better off for me to go to the Marshals or Empire, surrender my ass and say I wanna tag along with'em... You? Gonna stay here with the Big Man? Cuz the Feds want that ship he came down on..." and he pointed at the Dawn. Sara nodded, to which he told her, "Alright... Good luck..." before he extended his hand, "Get me up. Painkillers are kicking in and I can waddle my ass outta here..." before he started ditching his gear.

She helped him up once his armor was completely gone, then told him, "Take care, McKay..." to which he nodded and wished her the same before departing. Chief nodded to the man, who gave a quick mock salute and a smile, then walked away. She crossed her arms and said, "Don't worry. If you think he's gonna rat us out, the Feds probably already know. He'd get killed for failing his mission anyway..."

"Mm... Let's go," The Spartan tilted his head to the base as the sun began to rise. Best not to question what Sara had just told him.

... Oh, the Bodies they'll have to clean before things got too dirty...