Unknown Location
2557 Military Calender
You know… a flashbang wasn't fun.
One fired off about three feet from your position certainly didn't make it any better. Mark sat there as he tried to get rid of the cottonmouth, concentrated on lights with a semi-blurred vision, made out sounds with semi-blown out hearing, and tried to not touch the burns on his face and palms.
The room he was in was lined with grey metal walls. Poorly lit. A one-way mirror on his left side. A black desk sat before him
He didn't know where he or the rest of his crew were. One moment, he was aboard the Godforsaken Normandy. Next moment, the blinding lights and blurs of a flashbang grenade went off. He didn't even see the little projectile when it exploded. He felt hands grab him and drag him out.
He wondered where Shepard and Leng were. Were they taken too? Was he still on the Infinity? He might be… For all he knew he might be back on a UNSC colony or some ONI prowler.
If ONI wanted him dead, he'd be dead. But they wanted something out of him. Christ knows what. Information ONI didn't have? What a joke. If they had recordings of him in his bathroom he wouldn't all be that surprised. Besides, Mark's reports were already sent to FLEETCOM. ONI had everything.
About fifteen minutes passed? It was hard to tell. He tried to feel for his holster, only to find his pistol gone.
Right.
He wondered where Contradiction was. He left him within Lucy's data port. In hindsight, that wasn't a very bright idea. Maybe he should've kept the AI with him.
Then again, this is the same AI who coincidentally with the most advanced communication systems in history was only able to pick out an ONI agent out of all the mess on the garden world. The same one who'd have an easier time tracking the ship even despite a ONI computer plotting the course. Jesus.
Everything leading up to this screamed ONI conspiracy. Why the fuck didn't he do anything? Why the hell did he order the ship to get closer to the damn God's Key?
Of your destiny.
It wasn't his usual mental voice saying those words. That was…something else.
Something else…
The door finally opened. He tried to look back but a voice told him to continue staring at the mirror.
"Name, rank. ID," A female voice added him.
He sighed, "are you fucking serious?"
There was no response. Obviously they were.
"Captain Mark Florence, United Nations Space Command Legend After. Service number: 04211-10155-MF." Florence said with some annoyance.
"Naval training?"
Mark was annoyed. He turned around. "You already know this. Why-"
He immediately turned back when he found a magnum aimed directly at his head, didn't even have time to look at who was holding it.
"Annapolis." He said.
So that's how they're going to play it? Everything synonymous with ONI bullshit. They go through all this trouble, take the last straw from the Navy, in order to do what? Silence a voice that didn't even know what the hell was going on?
Fucking spooks.
He heard footsteps, and the door opened and closed behind him.
What the hell was the point of that?
Whatever the reason, the doors opened back up. And two people walked in on each side, standing in front of him.
Their faces were still a little fuzzy, but overall he can make out the main details.
One was a woman in her late thirties. Blonde hair tied back in a short ponytail and a naturally angry face. Dark circles that surrounded blueish-green eyes. A straight nose and gaunt, reddish checks. She wore the naval uniform with all the ONI variants. Captain on her collar with the seal of the Office on her right shoulder and the seal of the UNSC on the left shoulder.
"Captain Florence, I'm Captain Veronica Dare, Office of Naval Intelligence." The Captain said, sat down in the chair across from him. Ensign Phelps stood next to her, arms crossed. "We don't have a lot of time, so we're going to try and make this as fast as possible…"
"Where's my crew?" Captain Florence immediately said.
"They're safe, Captain. We have them in a secured location. We left the critically injured that were unable to move on the Normandy."
He nodded. "You won't harm them?"
"Our main concern is with you," Dare replied
Mark didn't say anything
She sighed, "I'm going to ask you a couple questions, and you're going to answer them truthfully to the best of your abilities. First, we…want to understand your beliefs in Naval Intelligence's involvement within this whole incident. We know ONI asked you to undertake this mission, but what about the rest of the situation?"
She spoke slowly and deliberately, as if she was avoiding saying the wrong thing. He knew somewhere behind the glass, this was all being recorded.
"Why do my suspicions matter at all, Veronica?" Mark said.
Dare sighed, slightly bothered by the first name usage, "Captain, you're right, we do know what you don't know, and know what you don't know that you don't even know."
Well that's reassuring. Mark looked at her holster. Same magnum that was aimed at him earlier.
"Captain, please answer the question," she prodded.
Under the stoicism was some sort of nervousness. Most likely due to time constraints?
Another irritated sigh. Florence leaned back in his chair. "When Admiral Osman contacted me and took over my computer to make a jump, it doesn't exactly take a fucking moron to figure out that something was very off, yet I still followed orders. I was… 'baffled' to find our species on the other side, and they, specifically Commander…," Mark didn't know Shepard's first name, did he? "…Shepard didn't look like any UNSC regulars, and I had no knowledge of any UNSC assets deployed out here, so I thought they were ONI.
"And the discovery of two Spartan-IIIs that weren't on the crew manifest didn't help either."
"And that's all you really know, Captain?"
"Veronica, what the hell is the point of all this?" Mark said. She seemed bothered every time he mentioned her name. It's an informal gesture, among officers of the same rank… ONI or not.
Still, Veronica hid it with a sigh and asked another question, "you were in complete control of the operation, yet you allowed the ships past the hard deck...
Mark didn't say anything at first. He then spoke as if he were in a court-martial. "In face of a Forerunner artifact that I nor any of my men have experience with. Unfortunately, because of this I was unable to respond correctly-"
Captain Dare shook her head.
Florence continued. "-and I will be the first to point out that this costly mistake was on me, that this is unquestionable incompetence of command and I will be rightfully punished according to the Navy, not you. Not ONI."
Captain Dare rhythmically tapped the desk and stuck her tongue in his check.
Mark continued, "I froze because I was unable to command efficentially. And either way, I should be reporting to FLEETCOM. This is their turf."
Dare thought for a moment, "Captain...we didn't know about the Halo Ring until the Elites found it. However, the location of artifact five-zero-zero-zulu designated God's Key has been known to ONI for about three years."
Three years? Three years they knew about the artifact and yet it looks like it's been dormant for centuries. Three years ONI knew something like this existed, and did nothing... They didn't drag the entire UNSC Military into the situation until the unidentified signal dragged the Elites to discovery it.
But more importantly… "Why are you telling me this?" Mark asked.
"We've known about the existence of the artifact for nearly five years," Dare replied instead. She seemed to genuinely speak the truth. The anger and detective bravado was replaced by just the constant underlying seriousness and anxiousness. The eyes sold it all, concerned and tired. "We've known about the artifact for nearly five years. "...Every major Forerunner artifact mentioned something about this specific construct through extremely odd and out-of-place black and red hieroglyphs. Most of these hieroglyphs were incomplete, and we had to piece them together as we found more and more Forerunner artifacts.
"The hieroglyphs formed a system that allows us to pick up a complex radio frequency. We listened for a year. Nothing. Then without explanation a high energy tachyon-based frequency was emitted throughout the entire galaxy. The only specific signal we could track to its origins was the God's Key. Six months ago the galactic frequency became so intense, ONI couldn't hide it from the rest of the UNSC. The Navy tracked it down, utilizing the Infinity. Captain Del Rio found Installation 03 along with another classified artifact known as Requiem. They thought Requeim was the source of the signal. It stopped for a time… The God's Key began to emit this same signal near Installation 03, thus at that point we could no longer hide God's Key from the rest of the Navy. We believe the signal is correlated to-"
"Whatever the hell that thing was that attacked Earth." Captain Florence said for her. "For about three years you did nothing with the artifact? Why the fuck are you telling me?"
"Well, we couldn't do anything," Veronica mumbled. Her voice nearly hollow. "The artifact was dormant. We even landed a few teams on it and nothing happened. No matter what we did, this artifact lay dormant. We knew barely anything about it, only that it emits a massive gravitational depression caused by some unnatural form of dark energy contained within the artifact itself. The theory was maybe the Key would be activated by another source of dark energy, but the UNSC had no idea how to access dark energy or create it."
That was far more than the rest of the UNSC knew. Even if it was so little...if Captain Dare was telling the truth But Captain Florence was never informed of this tachyon frequency, and he never heard anything about a galactic signal through naval sources.
"How does this relate to me?" The Captain said. He didn't move, didn't even blink.
Captain Dare eyed the one-way mirror. She took a moment, continued to look until an all clear was seemingly given.
"That's...Captain, why did you hesitate when the God's Key activated?" Dare said. "It relates to your decisions.
"Why the hell does it matter?" Florence yelled. This time it seemed to echo
The ONI secrecy was getting tiresome and unnecessary. Soon enough, the entire UNSC bureaucracy and possibly a fire squad will rain down upon them. ONI will bee washed away either to a prison or a grave.
Dare shook her head, and as Florence's frustration built up so did hers. She took out something from her pocket. A paper notebook and pencil. Been a long time since Captain Florence had seen actual paper. She wrote something down in the notebook.
"Jesus Christ, we are running out of time!" Captain Dare yelled at the one-way mirror.
There was no reply.
Dare mumbled something under her breath that Florence didn't catch, then she spoke. "UNSC AI CTD 9810-5, callsign 'Contradiction', had identified a similar, streamlined signal as your group got closer to the artifact. This signal was directed right towards the Legend After. It bypassed systems at an unprecedented rate, never-"
"Wait, wait, hold the fuck up, Captain." Florence interrupted. "This same galactic system bypassed security trying to access ship systems? Even if Contradiction didn't tell me for whatever reason, someone aboard would have noticed-"
"It wasn't after ship systems, Captain. This signal has been clearly accessing UNSC neural interfaces, not only of your crew, but your CNI chip, Captain."
….That couldn't be impossible. Neural interfaces don't have access to communications systems for safety and protocol reasons. It literally could not be accessed by any sort of frequency on any conventional radio channels but only through the linkage with the AI and...the ship…
"It remotely hacked a ship with some of the most sophisticated and advanced cybernetic defense warfare Humanity has?" Florence said, more of realization than bafflement.
"Imagine our surprise," Dare responded quietly. "This was in a matter of a few seconds. Contradiction had no idea the extent this signal had on your CNI chip, Captain. However, when he did detect the breach and try to plug up the hole, the Legend After was transported to the unidentified solar system."
"And why didn't Contradiction tell me about this? I understand there's nothing I can do, but it'd be good to know," Florence asked.
"Well...the Spartans and Lieutenant Banks weren't the only moles we had aboard your ship, Captain." Dare said plainly.
Florence didn't say anything for a moment.
"Fuck," he managed to utter.
"I'm sorry, Mark."
"Right...But he still could've told me. Why do you want to know why I hesitated? Why did I allowed the ships past the hard deck? Why didn't he tell me?"
"It's because the AI successfully identified the signal and is concerned about the extent, and we're trying to find out what that extent is," Captain Dare answered.
Jesus Christ. What else did Contradiction not tell him about? He was a fourth generation, able to simultaneously run numerous processes far beyond third generation AIs. Mark wondered how much he knew.
"Whose signal was it?" Mark asked
Captain Dare smiled. She leaned back, "now that's classified, Captain. But Contradiction identified a lot. Not just the signal but a lot of frequencies and information not only on the squids but those...other new contacts. And I gotta say he found some scary stuff. "
And that's when the line was drawn. "What the fuck do you mean, Veronica? ONI has done shit and knows shit that is currently vital to the UNSC. Humanity is at risk, and yet you still want to play the same stupid game!"
He could feel his heart beating, the adrenaline pumping through. He turned to the one-way mirror, "when Lord Hood catches you motherfuckers, you're ALL DEAD! Every last one of you is going in front of a fucking firing squad! What the fuck are you doing!?"
He quickly turned back to Captain Dare, only to find a disappointed face as she calmly got up and made it halfway to the door before it opened. Someone else walked in, standing in between the two like some security guard as Captain Dare walked out.
She wore a ONI naval suit. She was a lot taller than Mark, maybe standing around six-ten, or six-event. In her mid-fifties, her grey skin was slightly greyed. Gaunt cheeks and jet black hair tied in a bun and dark brown eyes nearing pure black. And what was usually smugness and deception, and all the usual marks of the untrustworthy politician of the old days weren't there. Just conviction, confidence and the sullenness all of HIGHCOM had.
"We're only doing what we always do, Captain." Admiral Osman began, no underlayer, no manipulative words. "And we'll continue to do it unless either the UNSC completely collapses, or the UEG - whenever they are resurrected - puts a clamp on us. Our roles are vastly different, thus our methods are also different. That's how it works, Captain. That's how it always works. But we want the same thing."
"And what the hell is it that we want?" Florence said, not caring for the repercussions of what Osman will do.
She didn't speak for a moment, looking to the scared Captain, "the same exact thing as you, Captain. We both took our oaths. ONI wants to defend Humanity at any and all costs. During the UNSC's formation, during the Great War, and during right now. Everything we - ONI's done - Captain, is to ensure Humanity's survival. Nothing more. And while the Navy seems to forget about it, our "unjustifiable actions" saved the Human race. And now it's the only thing keeping the UNSC in one piece.
"Captain," Admiral Osman turned to the one-way mirror. "We're out of time. We'll have to go to plan B."