Robert Watts

We got a location and a signal.

It could be a trap. All the intel he had sent had been good but... too good, perhaps?

He said that he had kept his backdoors from before the UNSC tried to kill him. In that case wherever they black-boxed him had been high up, very high up. ONI high up. The man had been helping us catch their spies and infiltrators, helping us find out where their intelligence assets were. That made me nervous. Was this legit? Was Oni just setting us up?

If they were then they were burning a ton of agents, which was almost flattering. But if this was legit, if he actually was some crazy mad scientist type who had been burned... If he actually had a fucking fleet for us to use? Well someone had to come in, had to investigate. Since he went through me, since I was the one who 'discovered' him, that meant I got stuck following the trail.

It was a known system but one that wasn't settled, too far on the edges of human space and resource-poor. When I ported in my jaw dropped and my eyes opened wide.

"Jesus Christ."

Ships. So many ships.

"Watts? Are you there?"

I blinked as I looked at his face.

"Yes, I am."

"I was promised men, Watts, lots of men to crew all of this. Unless your three ships are considerably bigger than they look you have greatly disappointed me."

I felt my body sweat.

"This is a lot of ships."

"I've been very busy for quite a long time, using AI aid, robots, and a lot of elbow grease. I really hope you haven't wasted my time, Sir! I fully expect the ships, guns, and material I am bringing to the table to be used."

"I promise you on my honor: they will be!"

"Good. We have a war to fight and I fully intend to win."

I smiled as I thought about what we could do with an actual fleet, what we could do now that we didn't have to rely on civilian ships and stolen military craft.

"So do I."

"Meet me aboard the Ahavha, also giving you a signal so you can find my ship."

He paused.

"Also leave your guns behind, we are all friends here and I don't want some jumpy recruit ruining dinner."

"I understand."

The ship we had was a military one, low-class but not exactly small. I took in the size of Monk's ship as the airlock opened and our whole ship was tractored inside. This 'Ahavha' was huge and, as the port doors closed, I felt worried. I looked at my men.

"No weapons."

"Sir."

"He has an entire fleet out there, if he wanted us dead we would be dead. No guns."

My men nodded with discipline. We patted each other down and walked outside, there were 90 of us in total. The doctor waited for us outside in a lab coat, sipping some coffee. He looked at us and counted and then visibly robotic creatures walked out, some of my men flinched and I was glad we had ditched the guns.

"The bots are going to hand out some papers, do me a favor and write down your favorite food and drink combo. We will try to get it made for you in the dining hall in... um, half an hour?"

The men took the paper and wrote down their requests, I asked for a steak. The doctor looked at me.

"Men, I hope you do not mind eating in the dining hall while I talk to your leader in private? It's all very hush-hush information, you understand."

The men looked at me for approval, I nodded and they walked away. I looked at him.

"We will be going to my private quarters as soon as the men are squared away."

"Understood..."

The men were led off and then he placed his hand against the wall of the ship, a portal opened and I walked with him onto an island. A visibly pregnant woman waved her hands and I took off my cap.

"Tifa, this is Mr. Watts. Mr. Watts, this is my wife Tifa."

She was dressed up in a sundress and bowed slightly.

"I am charmed to meet you."

"The same."

She offered her hand and I kissed it, I walked inside their home and saw that my steak was waiting for me at a table with... four chairs? I sat down and blinked as another woman walked in, this one orange. We started eating, I looked at the two girls who flanked him.

"So this seems to be a lot for a one-man job, or even 3 people."

I looked at him.

"How did you do it?"

"As much as I would love to claim credit for, well, everything... I really can't."

"So you have more people?"

"Have you ever heard of the Forerunners?"

I blinked.

"Can't say I have?"

"They were an alien civilization, ONI was able to find a small cache of their technology some time ago but they couldn't make head or tails of it. Due to a congenital condition, it's easier for people of my bloodline to understand the written language of the Forerunners and I'm even a bit of a savant at it. Once ONI found out about us, they captured my entire community, murdering any of us who resisted. They killed my whole family and blamed it on pirates."

There had been a lot of pirate raids in the past, ONI could use that excuse.

"We were brought to the facility and they took me inside but, well... I didn't want to work for the people who murdered my community, it's really that simple. So, as an example to the others, they shot me then left me to die near the systems they wanted us to decipher. I could read the writing and since they purposefully shot me in a way to make it linger? That was enough time to activate the teleporter and the self-destruct. That led me to this ship, and something called the Star Forge."

"The Star Forge? That's an evocative name but what is it?"

He snapped his fingers and I watched on a screen as a large asteroid was destroyed by the nearby star, ripped apart and... absorbed?

"It was old, very old, but it could build a lot of stuff quickly. Very quickly. The problem was that if I used it it would destroy itself due to its sheer age. At the time, though, I didn't know that, I was just bleeding inside this ship. I made it to the bridge because the one portal which was opened led to it. In what I thought were my last moments I dropped on the captain's chair, bled on it, and passed out."

"What happened then?"

"The ship took in my DNA and recognized me as its master in absence of any other valid candidate. We bonded, the ship's computers and my mind. It made me smarter, considerably smarter, and I dedicated myself to learning, to studying, then I used the computers to peer into the universe. I was able to remember enough about ONI to remember the password the overseer had taped on his computer."

"What?"

"He tapped his login and password to his computer, in front of us."

I stared at him.

"ONI isn't nearly as smart as you think they are, you must understand that. They're brutal, yes. They're horrible, yes. But their success mostly comes from the sheer amount of money they can throw at a problem. The actual people in charge? They are not that bright. I still remembered the login and they didn't bother changing the password it so I was able to get into their systems and then create more backdoors. While I was doing that I looked across the Forerunner network and found the Covenant."

"You've known for a while."

"The UNSC is not worthy of my help nor my technology. If I helped them I would be condemning humanity to eternal slavery, a foot stomping on a face forever. But If I don't help out the Covenant will wipe out humanity. So I searched for someone worthy of my help and found you. The Front is the only force I could find that was righteous enough to deserve my technology."

I blinked.

"I'm honored."

I looked at the orange woman.

"This Is Kori. She's a Tameranian, an alien."

"Hello, friend Robert."

She smiled at me sweetly.

"It's hard to believe that you're an alien, the cosmetic differences are not that-"

"Kori, do the thing."

She picked up a fork and blasted it with energy from her eyes, I stared at her.

"I also sleep with Mark."

I looked at him, he shrugged.

"I regret nothing."

I couldn't help myself, I laughed.

I dug into my steak.

"So now we get into the next part: what I want and need in return."

I looked up at him.

"What do you want?"

"I want the position of chief of engineering for the entire Front."

I blinked.

"I don't see a problem with the idea but why?"

"Each of the 6 Carriers I built is capable of making ships, guns, and other war materials. Most of humanity's industry is located in the inner worlds. Each carrier is of now roughly 10% of the outer worlds' industrial might. The other 40% is everything else located in the rim. So long as a single Carrier exists, our fleet exists."

I looked at him.

"That's good news."

"The thing is that I have to have full command of one of the six Carriers so I can convert it into another Star forge. I need to expand it so it can also double as a training yard for Project Athens. In order to do my job effectively, I need the authority to do it. So I need a position that puts me in charge of the whole 'making stuff' thing and 'training our supersoldiers' thing."

"You don't want to be an admiral? A general or the like?"

"My job is to make things that help the fighting man win, my job is to give them the intel they need to win. If I mess around with other things I won't be as effective. It's a war of survival, we need to be effective."

I took that in.

"You gave us a fleet, that counts for a lot."

I thought about it. I wasn't the only voice but the other two heads would know what this would mean for us. They would understand what a difference a fleet of our own, a true fleet, would mean.

"Consider yourself a member of the inner circle."

We needed him at the end of the day, after seeing the fleet I fully understood that. If he wanted the job of making more weapons and material for us... well, he gave us the best interview possible.

"Good, well then get me the men you promised because we have a war to win."

I decided I liked him.