Cell looked at his helmet placed on the desk. The four nodes were quiet, far from the droning red lights that flickered when Cell was wearing it.
It had been quite some time since Cell had returned to UNSC Revenant, looking at Washington's office. Cell had sat in the main desk that Washington would normally be sitting in, because Washington was to busy sitting by the side of the wall, swigging down beer bottles and placing them on the table attached to the wall like it was a bar counter.
Washington looked into his bottle.
"… You know, I never really did trust smart AIs." Washington spoke, throwing the bottle to the side of the table, only for it to perfect balance on the edge of the glass bottom.
Cell gave Washington a side glance.
"It's because of Epsilon and Meta situation, right?"
Washington blinked.
"Yeah. The whole… original Project Freelancer."
Cell turned his gaze from Washington back to his helmet.
"I've heard about that. Some weird project done by Doctor Leonard Church after the end of the Covenant War, right? Something to do with the development of Smart AI technology, and using several ONI-associated Spartan IVs."
"I'd rather not really talk further about it, nor would Captain Lionel L. Church. That was his father that had set off the second half of the Created Conflict, after all. But you already understand most of it. But…. God damn, they were… they were playing us from the start, like a damn fiddle…" Washington Sighed as he grabbed another bottle, gripping the cap with his bare hands and pulling it clean off from the glass neck.
Cell scratched his head as he sighed as well.
"Now you know how the Created dominated so quickly. If… if it's any comfort to you, most of the mind assembly died. Lifespan ran out and most kinda degenerated, and any smart AIs that filled in the gap as successors were destroyed or ran and hid in spare Promethean knights in some unknown parts of the galaxy. They don't have any powers anymore, Wash."
Washington sighed.
"Are you sure? What if the rest of them come back like the Meta? Or the Didact?"
"We don't talk about the Ur-Didact."
"No, but we'll talk about Smart AIs, and what you think we should be doing from this day on forward."
Washington turned himself around the chair to properly face Cell, holding the half-empty beer bottle in his hands.
Cell gathered his thoughts for a moment, tapping on his helmet in a steady rhythm as Washington waited for the Chief Engineer to speak.
Cell opened his mouth.
"First off, I think you should stop drinking all my worker's product."
Washington looked down at the label of the beer.
"I just need to wind down a bit, after all that suddenly happened."
"Wash, you said that 5 days ago when I last saw you on the Pelican. You were still drinking your way down to the Graveyard too."
"… Did I?"
"Jesus, you don't even remember. Fantastic."
"Hey, how about you try to cope with your life being some kind of simulation."
"I have. Both me and Ram."
Washington and Cell remained silent for a few good moment.
"Wait… what?" Washington finally broke the silence with a confused tone.
"Captain Church probably didn't tell you this. Our mother had been one of the lead scientists for project CHRYSANTHEMUM, working under Colonel James Ackerson."
"The Spartan III augmentation procedures?"
"Yeah, wanted to see if they could broaden the genetic selection process. They needed Spartans to be mass produced, and only 35 initially successful Spartan IIs weren't a good place to start a mass production, wasn't it?
Trouble is, UNSC was willing to go through some shadiness for their results… but not 'kidnap children' level of shadiness. So our mother used her embryo, and my dad's sperm to make an ovum for genetic marker searching and experimentation. Except the process of only having one ovum to search and prod around through Smart AI-controlled simulations were slower than they thought, so they induced the ovum to split. Then they found out two ovums were still slow in terms of trying to find the acceptable range of genetic cirtieria, so flash cloned the two Ovums, and kept inserting various genetic markers into them to have the Spartan III project simulated.
Most of the flash cloned Ovums degenerated and died by the end of the week, and by the time the Spartan III project finished its experimentation phase, only the original ovum and the induced split copy remained. Even to this day, me and Ram doesn't know which one was the original ovum, and which one was the induced copy. Frankly? Neither of us wants to find out. If we did, we'd probably forget it. We at least agreed on that."
"… Jesus."
"Yeah, I was my mother's testing bed for Spartan III augmentation Project. You want to talk about coping with our life being some kind of simulation? Well, try and top being a literal simulation on how broadly successful Spartan III augmentation could be."
"How did you guys cope with that?"
"We did it the only way that was possible for us at that time: We just picked up a rifle and fought. We never got to be Spartan IIIs. By the time we were young adults, they already made the last ones, and the best thing we could do was to skip marine work and go straight to being an ODST, protect Sword base on Planet Reach. Due to our nature, we never really were allowed out of Reach. Potential controversy and scandal and what not. They needed a somewhat good image if they wanted to slander Halsey."
Washington had put down the bottle, trying to stand up a little straighter in his chair.
"Cell, I'm… I'm sorry that happened to you and Ram."
"What for? It's not like we were heavily disfigured or mentally broken because of it."
"… Are.. You sure?"
"Yes. I'm fine. We're fine. Hey, peak physical and mental capacity thanks to the gene modification from the markers- that's a good thing! I wasn't at the level of Spartan IIs and IIIs, sure. But it's still better than an average human! And besides, I'm at least happy that our contributions meant that the fatality rate for Project CHRYSANTHEMUM was an all time 0%."
"… I seriously don't know how to respond to that."
"Don't! I'm just saying, I know what it feels like to be nothing more than a product of someone's simulation project! Yours were by some ass-hat AIs thinking they were better than humans-and let the results show that the only thing they exceeded us in was being a pretentious prick- and Me and Ram were by our mother. But let's be honest, Wash. You were used by a lot of people in your life, without you even knowing."
"Phrasing, Cell."
"You were played like a damn fiddle. Meta, South Dakota, the chairman… By Doctor Leonard Church mostly. But here you are, still standing while the rest are floating as space junk with a bullet lodged in their brains. You've already gone through worse than some retrospective revelation. And I still remember what you told me you did in fifth grade."
""Slammed your/my bully from third grade's face into a mirror and nearly costed him his eye.""
Both snickered.
"You're resilient, Wash. Maybe it's taking you longer to take those bottles out of your lips than last time because you don't see target. But you have to realise that we need you to take the beer off your diet, now. They need you. Caboose, Tucker, Sarge, Simmons, Grif, Donut, Doc. Caboose specifically: Tucker is fine with Alpha and Epsilon Church's death, but I could see time to time how much poor Caboose misses his leader. I know you probably couldn't stand the state UNSC and ONI was in. A lot of us didn't. But at least stand up for your team mate that you all survived with until UNSC Revenant managed to pick you guys up."
Cell stood up, grabbing his helmet and tapping Washington on the back on his way out to the door. It was time to take the Pelican and go back down to Night City.
"Hey, Cell." Washing unsuccessfully tried to seal the half-drank beer bottle with a cap before he turned to the leaving Chief Engineer of UNSC Revenant. "What do you think I should do first? After learning that Insurrectionists are more from Smart AIs than anything else…"
Cell shrugged.
"I don't know. How's the situation in New Mombasa?"
"Captain Church finalised the deal, we were just about to inform you about that."
Cell nodded.
"Then we can start from there, I guess. You can grab some of the Spartans and workers, go to New Mombasa. Build a second base of operation there. Maybe after the New Mombasa division is established, we can try quietly search for surviving UNSC pockets in space. I'd probably make a movie about Master Chief too, after this documentary is finished and released. In case that happens, maybe we'll get a surge of people enlisting for UNSC. Genjiro's hellbent on being in charge of Reds and Blues PR at this point. But even he can't do anything about Spartans and UNSC's imagery. And you've seen me on camera. I can't improv for shit, Wash. But you can. That's why Captain Church placed you in charge of our ship's Spartan Division. Who knows, maybe you talking on Camera could make some potential Insurrectionists think twice."
Cell rolled his eyes to the sides, and then up. He was trying to remember something. Cell snapped his fingers.
"Oh, yeah." Cell exclaimed as he used his wrist pad to send some data to Washington's Compad. Washington moved his gaze to his Compad when it pinged. He picked it up, deciding to read what Cell had sent.
Washington's brows furrowed.
"Project VANILLA? What's this?" Washington asked as he looked to Cell, already a step out of the office door.
"It's a new Spartan augmentation project. Specifically centred around improving the Spartan IV augmentation. It's built for both Pre-existing Spartan IVs and Spartan candidates. Have a read of it if you've got time to drown yourself in a bottle. You and I both know we need more Spartans if we want to survive."
It's still in development phase, though. Cell quietly added under his breath as he wore his Engineer Variant MJOLNIR helmet, the four nodes glowing bright blood red the moment it fully enveloped Cell's head.
Washington watched as Cell left his office.
-oOo-
The interviewer looked around the wide open room, lights only illuminating the furniture in the middle of the stage, rest of the walls, ceilings and floors were covered in black metallic sheets.
This was a room in the regional Night City building of Diverse Media System, constructed specifically for interviewing high-profile individuals for something much longer and more important than a standard 15 minute TV show appearance. DMS had managed to buy out the rights to making a documentary of Reds and Blues, of Cell, and of the UNSC under their rival company Network News 54.
Allie Robero was a newcomer for DMS. She had gotten her mechanical engineering degrees from Standford University, one of the very few prestigious schools left in NUSA.
Then she became a media. It wasn't her first choice of job, she'll give you that. But in hindsight, it was better than going into Technological giants like Arasaka 0r Militech to be working on secret inhumane projects 23 hours 7 days a week.
Didn't mean that her love for science had died, however. That was the main reason why she bit down on the opportunity to interview the newest rising Megacorps as soon as the chance was peaking just around the corner.
Allie had been writing articles regarding the rather… unorthodox decisions and behaviours of the newest CEO, trying to balance the views and perspective as much as possible.
Was that a popular thing to do? No. Normally, it wasn't. In the current day and age where Megacorps powers influenced everything, from the economy to public images, and even information- having an unbiased article was far from a successful choice. In fact, it would only leave more scathing remarks from Megacorps for the lackluster descriptions of their company.
But the neutral articles for Reds and Blues were skyrocketing in views- it seemed like the public image of Reds and Blues were positive enough from their decisions that just relaying basic information of the Arbee's work ethics and business model was enough to garner support and attention.
That's most likely why her superiors offered her the position to make this documentary.
Allie waited patiently, yet couldn't stop herself from tapping her foot on the ground constantly in anxious silence.
It was already 9pm, Spartan Cell had promised to come in to film parts of the interview, as well as give Allie the materials for her to sift through to flesh out the documentary.
She had been sitting in the fronts seats during the emergency conference, she had some general gist of UNSC. She had gone through several records of the New Mombasa attacks. Found some of the old obscure video files of the ODSTs fighting the aliens.
Then she managed to find some of the video footage of the giant robot floating right on top of Earth. It was left in pretty bad quality, one that almost looked like a hoax. But Allie's gut instinct had told her this really did happen. Hell, there were even groups like the Voodoo Boys worshipping this… giant robot as a machine god.
Only for it to disappear within half a year or so.
Maybe she can ask Cell about that too?
She heard her holophone's text message light up- it was her boss.
[President Cell just arrived in the building- will be escorted here now. Get Ready.]
Allie quickly looked to the cameras- both handled by drones and cameramen alike. All of them were getting ready to roll.
Allie looked to her face, was her make up okay? Was there any smudges that could ruin the first take?
Finally, the door opened. Revealing the hulking mass of dark purple marching in. The lack of proper illumination in the room save for the centre stage made the four glowing red nodes all the more prominent, and intimidating.
This was probably the first time Allie was reminded that Spartans were meant to be super-'SOLDIERS'.
"Sorry I took so long. Had to have a talk with our Spartan Division leader. It went on longer than I originally expected, so…"
"Oh no! It's fine!" Allie replied with the best smile she could put on. Cell entered the spotlight, all cameras focusing on Spartan Cell's helmet.
Cell stretched out his palm to Allie, who shook the gigantic armoured hand in glee.
"Allie Robero, correct? The one I was messaging." Cell asked as he carefully sat down on the couch provided to him. The DNS had seen Cell's capability to bend a couch in half just by sitting on it, and had been carefully prepared to strengthen the chair this time.
"I am indeed. I've got some questions to ask you for this documentary."
"Of course, I'm aware of it."
"Ok, great. Now, I don't really have questions to ask yet, so… how about you start us off?"
"Right, right. So… until 97,445 BCE from our standard age, there was an ancient Alien species called the Forerunners."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Most of their technology were so advanced you wouldn't- you wouldn't fucking know what to make tails or heads out of. They were capable of construction as small as quantum scale, all the way to create megastructures that easily dwarfed stars and planets."
"I-I'm sorry, I think we're going through this a bit too sudden."
"… Oh, are we?"
"Yes, yes. Can we… I don't know, can we start with umm… how the UNSC started?"
"… Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, sure. Let's start with that."
Cell shifted in his seat.
"Okay, so… 1969, the US government were in a cold war against the Soviet. A race to the moon, in a sense. Soviet had already successfully launched a rocket that went to space. So the US government needed to reach the moon first, no matter what. The NSC, national space coalition, managed to do so.
"NSC? We… we never had the NSC. It was NASA, that landed on the moon."
Cell wagged his finger at Allie.
"No, NASA was the decoy data we had left behind that the US government picked up and snowballed into a physical organisation. It was originally NSC, until we deleted our records and placed fake NASA records in place."
Allie blinked, looking at the cameras and the cameramen with the same wide eyed expression the rest of the people behind the scene were making.
Cell saw the response, but instead continued.
"NSC landed on the moon. However, the members of the NSC had found something on the back of the moon that changed… everything. Everything, forever."
Allie whipped her head back to Cell, realising that this wasn't the time to stay slackjawed as she could be missing potential information that she could ask further.
"And What did they find on the moon that changed everything?"
"Forerunner technology. A half-destroyed Keyship with a single surviving Forerunner Smart AI, was found."
Allie made a small 'ooooh' sound under her breath. Now everything clicked with what Cell was trying to start with.
"And could you describe the Forerunners one more time? We'll have to edit the first part out so…"
Cell groaned, throwing his head back and looking to the ceiling.
"Forerunners were highly advanced alien races that existed up until the 97,445 BCE. Their technology were so advanced that they were capable of manufacturing and constructing at scales ranging from quantum level, to megastructures that easily dwarfed planets and suns. terraforming foreign planets light years away were just an afternoon homework for them. So advanced, that if you saw their technology right now? It would be more likely that you guys would be revering them as gods rather than finding out the inner mechanics of their technology."
"Right. Can you give us an example of these Forerunner Technologies?"
"Of course I can, the UNSC had been reverse engineering most of them for the past 5 to 6 years or so. So, they had the ability to perfectly convert an individual into pure data. I'm talking about both body and mind. Of course, the physical manifestation disintegrated completely, but completely all of it were transferred into digital state. This was possible because they used quantum foam for information storage. They were also capable of travelling faster than light, and predicting their FTL travel using highly advanced AIs. The also had a peculiar construction method, where all they needed were blue prints printed in quantum, and these small self-assembling nanomachine blocks reinforced by energy bonds. This mean that their buildings, ships, megastructures, weapons… all of them, were grown rather than built, almost like biological cells. They called it smart matter."
"Wow… and the UNSC…"
"Yeah, let me get back to that, actually. I was getting off track- the NSC had recovered that Forerunner artefact from the moon, and with the help of the Forerunner AI, we managed to reverse engineer it enough to build our own advanced spacecraft and software systems."
"How did- how did we not have records of this? Why wasn't humanity told of this at that time?"
Cell clasped his hands together, fingers intertwining.
"Because the Head of the NSC destroyed all records of the ship from the NSC database. He had predicted what would happen if the US government heard of this, and was scared of it actually happening. US government was only told that NSC were building new rockets for faster and safer travel to the Moon. So they left the NSC to do whatever they liked."
"I… see. And then NSC just… flew into space?"
"No. We found additional Forerunner artefacts and constructions in Kenya, Africa. NSC tried to dig that up and take it in secret. Kenya found out, questioned US government why the fuck their space travel organisation was in their country. US government didn't know, so after calming down Kenya, asked NSC why the fuck they were there. We didn't answer. We managed to create the first highly advanced AI in 1978, ironically called 'the Dumb AI' because it was an AI that stuck to its own programmed role and path. It gathered information, but only used those that was for its role. We got it from the blue prints the Forerunner AI had given us."
"Did… did the Forerunner AI have a name?"
"Yes, it called itself Objective Bias. A rather contradicting name, sure. But it somehow fit it's personality. But back to the creation of UNSC: 1984 to 1989, you all know what happened then. The Gang of Four, and degeneration of society, the 'Quiet War', yada yada yada. NSC was also forced to disband by the Gang of Four due to political power struggle. But the people that ran NSC weren't just going to take orders from greedy pig fucks and call it a day. They all came together in secret, now free from the US government, recruited various scientists from other countries and formed a non-government organisation. This new organisation was called United Nation Space Command."
"The UNSC…"
"Exactly, that was the UNSC. Objective Bias and our Dumb AI had predicted the downfall of society and Earth's environment. Considered it 'unnecessarily risky' to continue staying on Earth. So we set up Project Monolith. NSC officials and family members, and the select few population is taken on the very first spacecraft we managed to build with reverse engineering and Objective Bias's assistance. It had primitive Slip Stream Drive and Terraform engine, meant for faster than light travel and portable planet colonisation technology. We grabbed about a quarter of Earth's population, killed any of the US government officials that knew of NSC that refused to be part of UNSC. We then initiated Project Monolith, destroying all evidence and data regarding NSC, and taking all Forerunner technologies we had found."
"So the UFO from the moon…"
"We took that."
"And the one in Kenya?"
"We took that too."
"Right, right… And so after you destroyed the NSC record, that's when you put in NASA's data instead?"
"Exactly. People would think it's weird if there's this big gap in data where something as important as the moon launched occured. So we put NASA's data instead, meddled around that it was NASA that launched the first rocket to the moon. The quiet war and the chaos stirring the world had made it easier to smooth this over. And with that on 1989, UNSC and the quarter of the Earth's population was gone without a trace."
"The great disappearance..."
"We manged to find suitable planets to terraform and Colonise. Among our greatest, was the Planet Reach. The main headquarters for UNSC. Of course, we still spied over Earth. Just far away enough that Earth Rockets didn't know of our existence. Though apparently some of us were so fucking clumsy, we were briefly noted as UFOs."
"Oh my god, so UFOs were true!"
"Some of them. Most were hoaxes, though. It also turns out, Earth wasn't the only planet that had humanity."
"I… excuse me?"
"… Oh boy, this is going to take a bit to settle in, but Forerunner records have shown that one of the Forerunner's greatest adversaries were… drum roll, please… humans."
"… Humans?"
"Ancient Human civilisations, to be specific. 150,000 BCE, ancient human civilisations had rose to preminence in the Milky Way Galaxy. Achieving interstellar travel over a million years earlier and colonised planets across the Orion Arm."
"…. Oh my god."
"… yeah…"
"Oh my god!"
"I'll let that sink in."
"OH MY GOD!"
"Yeah, 'oh my god', I can't believe… Okay, sorry about that. I've already had my own breakdown at the fact much earlier, so I guess I'm… numb about this."
Allie jumped out of her seat. The room was in an uproar.
Cameramen staring at each other, few of Allie's make up artists standing by to refresh the interviewer's appearance had dropped their brushes.
Scrambling around, trying to check for records of conspiracy theories. None of them, however, were about ancient human civilisation going through space. Aliens, sure. But nothing about humans being aliens.
Amidst the chaos he had created with just his words, Cell sat quietly in his chair, tapping his fingers together.
"HOW DO WE NOT KNOW OF THIS?! WHY DO WE NOT HAVE RECORDS?!"
"I'll tell you guys when all calm down." Cell replied with a calm, tired voice as he grabbed a device from his hips, shuffling in his seat as he pulled it out and set it on the table.
The device whirred as Allie tensed up at the sound, before seeing a holographic image spike up and into the air.
"Here's the evidence, by the way. This was the exact record we had recovered from Forerunner constructions and computers. This, here…" Cell pointed at the group of aliens in the hologram, at work. Building facilities in exotic foreign planets using Smart Matter. Allie sat down quietly, all of the people in the room staring at the holographic alien models. "Is the forerunners. And here…"
Cell tapped on his wrist plate, the hologram model changing to show what looked more human, except… taller, bigger. Bulkier. Almost like Spartans than average humans.
"This was our ancestors, right before the 106,445 BCE. They had a longer lifespan than any of us, easily exceeding thousand years. You wanted to ask why there wasn't any records of them? It's easy. Our ancestors had a war with the Forerunners and lost. The Forerunners, as the victor, had… well… destroyed the remaining technologies of our ancestors, taken the remaining surviving humanity and through genetic modifications undid most of our evolutions. 44,000 years of evolution and technological advance, undone just like that. We were regressed into cavemen, and sent back to our presumed source, the Erde-Tyrene. Or as we call it now, 'Earth'."
Cell tapped a few more times, the hologram changing from the Ancestors to the Forerunner starmap, Earth as the centre.
The view of the star map, added in with the giant informations that Cell had so casually dumped on Allie, was just too overwhelming.
"… Oh… fuck…"
"There was some middle ground there that we had yet to recover. So we're not too sure what had happened other than some catastrophic events that caused the Forerunners to disappear from the galaxy. Though we know that the Forerunners had named the humanity after to be their successors, and allowing us access to their technology. We can talk more about that later. But what I wanted to say, was that Earth wasn't the only place they sent the troglodytes to. The Forerunners had also deported our ass into other galaxies. They too, had Forerunner artifacts. They too, had built primitive space craft and colonising engines. Most of them joined the UNSC, allowing us to rapidly colonise planets and increase our population.
Now, here comes the juicy details of the UNSC- some of those colonies didn't want to be part of UNSC. They wanted to do their own thing. The best decision UNSC could take, was to just leave them be. But they didn't pick that, they were UNSC - the main militaristic government. And when UNSC wanted to colonise, oh boy- they were fucking space England."
Allie awkwardly laughed along, not knowing whether they should keep Cell's remark in the actual documentary, or if it was better to edit it out.
"Insurrectionist forces were growing due to UNSC being a bit too oppressive, which was a bit ironic, really. Considering they left Earth for that very reason. Trouble is, UNSC had made a new intelligence division called ONI, and ONI had made these Smart AIs for societal algorithm calculations to assist in the UNSC's decisions. These Smart AIs saw the start of the insurrectionists, but left them to grow."
Allie watched as the Hologram changed. People were forming groups protesting. Farmers, settlers, factory workers- until it started to show people arming themselves with rifles.
"And why did the AIs let them be?"
"Excellent question: they calculated likelihood of external threats coming to threaten humanity, found out they were very high, and thus left insurrectionists so that Humanity can learn to combat threats, and be prepared."
"Wait, so these Smart AIs let the terrorist groups grow to… train humanity for war?"
"I mean… yeah, that's the simpler terms for it, isn't it? Made entire colony planets a fucking giant petri dish of social experiments to see how UNSC would act. And then we actually managed to be somewhat prepared for what the Smart AIs predicted."
"Right… oh! The New Mombasa att-"
"Yep, the New Mombasa attack. I hate those pretentious Smart AIs, but I hate the fact that they were right on the mark even more. Quite a lot of losses happen due to the Smart AIs intentionally fostering insurrectionist factions. They even socially engineered experimented on the outcomes of certain extreme directions. It also allowed many UNSC projects originally rejected for amorality to go through to combat and counter Insurrectionist movements. The Spartan II program was one of them."
Cell changed the hologram from terrorist forces shooting at UNSC marines, to the footage of Dr. Halsey and the 35 Spartan Candidates.
"Spear headed by Doctor Catherine Halsey, 150 candidates were identified through Outer Colony Vaccination program. Among them, 75 were noted available for… as the orders had called it, 'acquisition'. They were kidnapped in their sleep, replaced with flash clones that died pretty quickly shortly thereafter. Catherine Halsey had stated that the clones lived longer than expected, however, due to their parents nursing and taking care of the degenerating clones. Hypocritical bitch at her finest, as Catherine Halsey was pregnant at that time and her diary had told she was trying to go decaf to keep her pregnant child safe."
All cameras were focused on the training of child soldiers and their appearances after the Spartan II augmentation, noticeably less than the number they began with.
"Of the 75 candidates, only 33 candidates survived without physiological deformities. They were made to combat insurrectionist forces. Elite forms of riot control as I had stated in my emergency conference. However, just as the Spartan IIs were going to be sent out to fight insurrectionist forces, something unexpected happened."
Hologram switched to the completed Spartan IIs, all in the identical green MJOLNIR armour. However they weren't deployed into a battlefield filled with human terrorists, no- they were marching to an exotic looking army that looked far from human. A metallic sheen and kaleidoscope of colours marching out and about, curves of the armours, the weapons, the chips looking almost uncannily life-like in how sleek they were.
"The aliens…"
Cell shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"Correct. Humanity wasn't the only one in contact with Forerunner artefacts. Another group of aliens had done so, and like I said: You'd be more likely worshipping the Forerunners as gods rather than try and figure out their technology. That's what these groups of different alien species did. They made a religion out of Forerunner artefacts, and called themselves 'the Covenant'. However, the records they had gotten from Forerunner artefacts were misinterpreted, their entire religion based on a lie. The higher ups had power, technological strength. But when they followed the Forerunner technology's trail to one of our Colony planet Harvest, the ones in charge had found out about their entire religion being a lie. They had thought themselves to all be the successor to the Forerunners, but found out by the fragmented Forerunner AI Mendicant Bias that that was far from the truth. Forerunners had only named humanity as their successors, calling us 'the Reclaimer'. The Covenant had thought that the Forerunner Megastructure artefacts, recorded as 'Halo' were artefacts that the Forerunners used to ascend to a higher plane of existence. They dubbed this the 'Great Journey'. As such their movement was based in recovering these Halos, activating it so all those that were worthy ascended to the same plane as the Forerunners. Thus, when these shitheads found out that they weren't chosen, and instead humanity had- the higher ups were threatened. Why? Because that single statement by the Forerunner AI could mean that the leaders, the San'Shyumm species that named their position 'the prophets', could have their position and power usurped and replaced with humanity. They didn't like that, their ass was starting to get comfortable on their high horse. So they did the one thing that effectively made the Covenant worthless in their greed to retain power. They deemed Humanity a heretic that needed to be eradicated, to silence humanity before humanity and the rest of the covenants found out the truth. No prisoners were to be taken."
Cell chuckled as the hologram fully showed footages of the start of the Human-Covenant War. Hologram showing hologram propaganda of the Prophets against the advancing Covenant forces. Spouting faiths and the scriptures of their religion that all amounted to bullshit spilt out of their asses so they can stay comfortable in their golden thrones.
"Can you fucking believe this? Pig headed pieces of shits. Look at these worm necks, fucking greedy little ass hats, all of them! Sat on their asses on their gravity throne for so long that they got scared to walk again! They'd rather kill all of us, ALL OF US! BEFORE THEY ADMITTED THEY WERE WRONG, AND SAY THAT THEY GIVE UP THEIR POSITION! THESE FUCKING- MONUMENTAL PRETENTIOUS PRICKS!"
Cell stood up, ripping the couch right off the ground and throwing it down on the ground, the strengthened chair shattering upon impact like it wasn't even made to be durable.
The floor had a rather large dent left from the throw, Allie and the people around the stage screaming and flinching and jumping back.
Cell heaved, shoulders and fists clenched as he turned to look at the Human-Covenant War.
He took a deep breath in, rubbing his helmet with his hands. Running them down as he breathed back out.
"Fucking, I… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have reacted like… GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!"
Cell kicked the remaining chair fragments near him, the chair leg flying towards the wall at a surprisingly high speed and getting lodged in.
Cell crouched down. The war had been going on for roughly 33 years. He was born when humanity was threatened, pushed to the edge. Had the flames nearly snuffed out.
Cell stood back up, pointing to the Spartans coming in to counter the Covenant invasion with surprising success.
"These fuckers wanted us dead. All, of us, dead. Every colony planet, massacred and glassed. The first UNSC ship that enountered the Covenant ship was destroyed, but Admiral Preston Cole had made a protocol before blowing up his own ship that every UNSC follows for our survival. The Cole Protocol, main instructions were to destroy all computers and AIs to prevent them from knowing about the core world locations. Earth, and inner colonies and important planets used by UNSC were among them. They were never meant to find Earth."
Cell sat on the ground, now chairless due to his emotional outburst.
He remained silent as he watched the Spartan IIs fight back.
"… We were at a severe disadvantage. Our spacecrafts weren't as advanced as the Covenants. We were still using kinetic ammunition while they used plasma weaponry. Tore into our hulls easily. But we managed to hold our ground thanks to the Spartan IIs. I told you, that we were born as oppressive forces, but grew to become vanguards of humanity. I meant that. Look, look at how hard they're fighting for our survival."
Allie watched.
"The Spartans were called 'Demons' by the Covenants. And you can tell why. Among them were our greatest Hero: John-117. Better called the Master Chief."
Hologram focused on one Spartan, running into the battlefield with an AR and a magnum. Purple blood coating the ground where ever he ran into.
"That Spartan over there, is one of the biggest reason we managed to win this 33-year old war. Look at him go- he was our hope. A propaganda you couldn't build, only witness the natural birth of it in the battlefield."
Allie stared at the hologram.
"Unfortunately, we were still being pushed back. Colony planets destroyed, populations evacuated or slaughtered. But one thing was clear to the UNSC- Spartan II program was a stunning success, and they needed more Spartans mass produced and fill in the gaps. Out came the Spartan III program, which helped turn the tide in our favour. In more than one ways."
"How did you guys win?"
"… UNSC found the 'Halo'. The very thing that made the covenant and broke humanity. We found it, and with Master Chief diving in and finding it's secret… it broke the covenant. After all, those San'Shyuum pricks had become to greedy, and decided to betray their main military forces for another species more obedient. The Sangheilis- the elites, now betrayed, had learnt of the secrets of the 'Halo', realised that Covenant was built on a lie… so they defected. It was the 'Great Schism', Covenant was split, their morales broken thanks to Master Chief, and the Sangheilis allied with UNSC to fight the remaining Covenant forces."
"And what exactly was the secret of 'Halos'? You told us about how the Covenants thought they were some great tool of transcendence, but what were they really?"
Cell turned his head slowly away from the hologram, and to Allie.
"They were weapons, Allie. They were fucking weapons of mass extinction."
Allie blinked.
"… Excuse me?"
Cell changed the hologram to show the Halo that Spirit of Autumn had discovered.
"Mega structures, where a huge blast would spread in all directions that would kill anything with nerve pathways in the mass vicinity. Forerunners had combated this ancient space zombies called 'The Flood', and in order to kill the flood and everything it had infected, they had used the Halo to kill all life on the planet before they restored it using backups stored in their arks. Like the meteors wiping out dinosaurs, I guess. Wait, no. That was a terribly inaccurate analogy. But you get the meaning of it, right?"
"I… they were trying to FIRE THESE?!"
"Yeah. They thought that it was how the Forerunners transcended. They would've fucking killed themselves and everything in the universe because of their sheer stupidity. A fucking galaxy nuker. They tried to fire it."
"Oh my fucking god…"
"Yeah. When the Sangheilis found out… oh boy, were they pissed. Remaining Covenant forces were desperate now. Well, the prophets specifically. Other covenant forces were still believing that the 'Great Journey' was true. The prophets knew it was all a lie, but they didn't want to surrender. They did everything they can to win, even if that meant activating a Halo ring. One accidentally arrived on Earth to find a Forerunner artefact in Kenya. That was the New Mombasa attack. Then the Covenant arrived again, trying to desperately glass Africa. We stopped it, luckily. But lives were still lost… The Human-Sangheili alliance had came back to earth to stop the last remaining Covenants, who activated the artefact to teleport from Earth to an Forerunner facility that controlled all of the Halo Arrays. The last remaining leader of the Covenant was trying to use that to wipe all life within the Halo arrays vicinity. We killed the last remaining leader before that could happen, and that ended the war."
Footages of a Sangheili clad in silver armour, and Master Chief were shown on the hologram, jumping into the portal.
"Is that still here? On… Earth?" Allie cautiously pointed to the artefact model in the hologram and nervously asked.
"No, we took that too."
Allie chuckled a little, relaxing a bit from Cell's rather blunt answer.
-oOo-
A few more stories after the Human-Covenant war, up till present time happened in a blur for Allie. It felt like she had reached her limits in focusing, and just disassociated. It was clear that UNSC's biggest event was the Human-Covenant War. And she at least remembered that Cell continuously reinforced the importance of that war.
The interview had finished about a minute ago, everyone slowly starting to pack up and check if the footage were taken properly.
"That was only like a summary of what fully happened. I've… kinda had some of the Spartans write a script for me to read on in the helmet, guess that didn't work out so well…" Cell said while looking at the remains of the chair.
Allie awkwardly laughed.
"We can… we can clean it up."
Cell nodded, as he handed Allie 3 shards.
Allie looked down at her palm, before looking back up to Cell and silently requesting explanation on what these were.
"You said you wanted materials for the documentary, right? It's not like you'll be using just our interview for the documentary. Those are footages, some of the Spartans and Marines and ODSTs talking more about the war, about Master Chief… et cetera."
"Right…" Allie nodded her head. Realising what she was holding, the shards suddenly felt heavier in her palm.
She felt out of it. Talking was her strong fort, so was science. But this was completely out of her leagues, if she was going to be honest. She staring at the corner of the wall, trying to take all of the information in.
She blinked, shaking her head. She had to take this all in. Otherwise, she can say goodbye to this documentary.
She was going to pull all nighters, she could feel it. But she wasn't in a position to complain about that.
Cell waved his hand as he walked to the exit alone, blending into the dark, showing only his four red nodes before the door opened to bask the Spartan in blinding light, forcing him to be nothing more than a black silhouette.
"Take care, now. Don't forget to send me the documentary before releasing it for cross reference. Okay?"
Allie simply nodded as she stared at the closing door.
Now, it was just her, the cameramen, and the other behind the scene workers.
Allie blinked while she stood silently under the spotlight.
This wasn't just history of UNSC. It was history of humanity as a whole, in the palm of her hands. Everything that they thought they knew was just tip of the iceberg.
And finally, finally the dread started to sink in.
If the Covenants won, if there wasn't the UNSC, then Earth's entire population… we would have all died in a flash, and we would never even knew that we died.
"Allie." One of the Cameraman, Pete, was walking up to her, with the same thousand yard stare that she had. Pete was trying to blink the shock away as he asked. "You think people will believe this?"
Allie looked at her palm. And knowing how Reds and Blues had irrefutable evidence that they came literally from space. That much was common knowledge, thanks to the New Mombasa attack.
"They'll have to." Allie replied.
Earth was about to get bombarded with truth bombs.