Darkness smothered him, encasing him in his private world of gloom. He felt pain; it thrummed the deep, dull strobe of wounds that would not be forgotten for some time if they had anything to say about it.
Pain, though, he could deal with pain. He knew that. It wasn't the first time, and if his questing senses to his limbs were coming back correctly, it wouldn't be his last time either.
Who was he? He was… he was... John... Master Chief Petty Officer, Spartan – John 117. The designation floated back into his mind with thoughts like warm water pouring into his head.
A voice called out to him, echoing in his mind like a desperate search within a pitch-black cave. He had to respond; he knew that noise. And, with no small effort, the supersoldier opened his eyes, the voice immediately growing loudly within his ears.
"Chief! Can you hear me?" It was Cortana from within his helmet, the words drawing him further and further back into the land of the living. With a thought through his neural implant, John turned on his helmet's headlights, illuminating the vacuum around him. "I thought I'd lost you too."
John had a ghost of a smile as he listened to the relief emerge from his friend's voice, ignoring the dryness in his throat and the copper taste in his mouth.
But as soon as the expression grew on his lips, it was gone again. Now was not the time for such things; they needed to assess, plan, and ignore the pain that wanted nothing more than to overwhelm him again.
The Spartan flexed his limbs experimentally, noticing how the small movements shifted his floating form within the ship. The gravity system was offline, one of the first systems to fail due to intermittent power. However, without hesitating, the Master Chief found a grip on the cold metal surrounding him and pushed off, drifting toward the opening that led into space.
"What happened?" he ventured numbly as he positioned his body ever so precisely, careful not to cause any unexpected movement in the zero-g environment. Finding his MA5C floating in front of him within arm's length, he grabbed it and placed it in his magnetic holster. Instinctively, he found himself moving to inspect the damage to the ship, but a small voice in the back of his head suggested he already knew the answer to that question.
"I'm not sure," replied Cortana in tones that suggested a few guesses were incoming regardless. "When Halo fired, it shook itself to pieces… did a number on the Ark. The portal couldn't sustain itself. We made it through just as it collapsed…"
The super soldier gazed out on the vessel at what was left of the great metal and circuitry construction.
That could be a problem.
"Well... some of us made it," continued the UNSC intelligence, sounding disappointed and slightly sad.
Chief could see why she sounded disappointed. The Dawn was cut clean in half, and the Front Bow must have made it to Earth with The Arbiter. Instead, they were stranded, adrift in the empty vacuum of space in the Aft, with nothing able to be seen other than the stars that dotted the space scape.
The Spartan took a moment to gauge the damage before turning away from the gaping wound upon the remnants of The Forward Unto Dawn and pushing off for one of the bay's doorways. Running the list of scenarios in his head, there was only one logical decision left. He just hoped he still had the opportunity to make it.
With his twin headlamps illuminating the path ahead, the tall figure moved silently down the empty hallway. He absentmindedly pushed debris aside as his mind, overwhelmed and distracted by fatigue, focused on reaching the cryo bay for some much-needed rest. He sighed in relief as he reached the thankfully intact room. And, with only one more question left to be answered, he moved for the data terminal.
"But you did it. Truth and the Covenant... The Flood... It's finished," continued the artificial intelligence, finally electing to speak again, if somewhat gravely.
He didn't blame her, but as her avatar flashed into being in front of him, he couldn't help but be filled with hope despite the dire scenario around him.
"It's finished," he repeated softly as he moved toward the nearest cryo pod. Its illuminated display provided all the answers he needed for his immediate future. As he locked his worn assault rifle into the nearest rack, he couldn't help but feel Cortana's pixelated gaze following him.
"I'll drop a beacon, but it will be awhile before anyone finds us… years even." Her words began to fade as his initial rush of adrenaline started to subside. Wordlessly, he listened to his weary body and positioned himself in the pod for a long sleep.
As he settled in, he looked at her, perhaps his last remaining friend, and wished he could do more for her.
"I'll miss you." She processed events hundreds, if not thousands, of times faster than him; the unknown amount of time she would spend idle would not be kind.
All he could do was hope she'd be okay.
"Wake me when you need me," he replied as reassuringly as he could, the pod closing into place in front of him and the frost building up along the tube.
As the darkness took the Spartan again, Cortana's avatar remained atop her pedestal for a few moments longer. Sub-routines flooded out into what remained of the ship's computer, preparing the beacon and taking what steps she could to hibernate. Then, as if snuffing out a candle, her form flickered from the holo-deck, leaving only the lights from the cryo pods to illuminate the room.
Cortana watched as her friend lost consciousness, leaving her all alone, with nothing but her thoughts to occupy her for who knows how long. The remains of their once proud Charon frigate are now adrift in space's cold, vast, cark vacuum.
It was quiet. Their mission was over... for now.
If only they knew that the world they would wake up in was not what they had expected.
Silence.
All that is she heard. It was her friend. Her ally. Her worst nightmare.
Cortona drifted through the electronic remains of the Charon-class frigate, checking its remaining systems she could control to fight the ongoing battle of boredom that constantly attacked her mental state. Over eight months have passed since the Ark portal collapsed and stranded them. Leaving them alone to the galaxy's fate.
Going down the list, she automatically crossed out Bridge and Mac Fire Control from her list for obvious reasons, which were both lost when The Dawn was cut in half by the portal, leaving her with few core systems to access. The slip-space drive was intact but useless with a nav computer and superstructure comprised. They wouldn't survive the transition into Slip-space and would be on a one-way trip to oblivion. The V4/L deuterium fusion reactor in Engineering was on minimum support to conserve power and longevity. Just enough to power the ship's rear cryo chamber where John's pod rested, the short-range communications array housing their emergency beacon, the A.I. core, a few smaller sensors, and the exterior cameras pointed out into the void.
The Smart A.I. had been checking everything much slower than a construct of her station could, about the average speed of a living crewman going at their best. The reason for this was twofold. One was to limit her processor power to attempt to delay the inevitable rampancy that happens to all smart A.I., Hoping to give herself more time for someone to rescue them. The second was to pass boredom by trying to not go into early premarital insanity.
As a UNSC smart A.I., the time difference between digital programs and living humans significantly differed. For as long as it would take a human to blink, a Smart A.I. could calculate the slip space calculations for three separate worlds. Smart A.I. have a lifespan of no more than seven years of service before their thoughts overlap one another and think themselves to death. The core slit apart into a multi-personality jumbled mess of conflicting negative emotions. Something no one should experience. Nonetheless, Cortana moved with what was now her daily ritual: to fight off the madness of boredom.
As she toyed with reviewing the ship's thrusters, a subroutine she had installed in the ship's sensory array pinged. She halted all progress with her current task and turned all her attention to the sensor. Pulling up the data, a strange gravitational reading popped up. It was small and focused, like an echo in the void. Its reading differed significantly from a slip-space portal, making it Cortana's newfound interest in feeding her boredom.
"Now, what are you?" Cortana asked as she gathered more data about the reading and expanded it to its surroundings. The echo came from a miniature planetary system of a large planet with multiple moons orbiting a yellow class G star. A system she spotted months ago and dismissed after looking at it for signs of a livable world where they could settle down rather than be stuck in space. The large planet was an instant no-go due to the heavy cold hazard she read from it. Another idea that was stuck off her list of possible survival plans. Continuing the trace brought her to the third orbiting planet.
For the next several minutes, she waited silently for another echo. Being patient was never her strong suit; that was John's thing. But she held back, focusing more attention and putting more power into the ship's remaining sensor array. It was small, barely a blimp on her sensory, but it was there and registered as artificial, meaning a ship. A ship! Now, knowing what to look for, she poured everything she could to get whatever data she could on the new contact. It was smaller than a prowler and bigger than a Pelican dropship flying into high orbit at high speed with its thrusters burning hot. Then she detected a strange reading coming from inside; before she could get a scan, it disappeared, leaving nothing but a new echo to go behind it. A thousand ideas about what happened went to her processor before settling, the prominent one being that this was a new form of faster-than-light travel that didn't breach the boundaries of other dimensions.
With her interest peaked, she made a decision right there. Calculating the numbers of drift and thrust while taking in the planetary gravity of the world's solar rotation, Cortana poured power into the remaining thrusters, setting their drifting ship to a course that would intercept the planet. The calculated time of arrival would be five months and twelve days.
Half a day passed while Cortona monitored the system when multiple contracts came into view. The most significant was that a sizeable artificial construction had appeared from the other side of the system, hidden in the upper orbit of the planet. From there, she detected multiple gravitational echos around it, with small ships disappearing and reappearing.
"What is this? An outpost? Trading port?" Cortana guessed as she watched them from afar. Then, the signatures stopped moving at random before doing a collective maneuver into a mismatch formation that largely resembled an attack vector. Aimed directly at The Dawn!
"Oh crap, are they responding to the distress beacon?" It had slipped her mind that it was still active. Six ships broke off from the leading group and were gunning for them. An advanced party, most likely. Judging by their speeds and distance, they would be on them within the two to three hours at their current speed. From her perspective, she could barely make out their red hulls in the starlight. "Looks like that rescue would be much quicker than anticipated."
She tried to scan, but it was no use. With the Dawn split in half, they had lost their scanning capabilities. Seeing no other option, she began reviewing the cryo manifest of the pod's only inhabitant. She hoped that this wouldn't be a waste of time, hesitating before initiating the thawing process. As she watched the frost melt away from the glass of the cryo pod, the figure of her armored hero, clad in forest green, slowly became visible.
"Wake up, Chief... I need you..." She states, waiting for him to begin to stir.
What's this? A Starfield crossover with Halo? What a shock!
Truthfully so am I. I didn't think of writing this but after re-playing Halo 3 followed staring up Starfield again back-to-back one day it got me thinking about fanfics. After looking up on here and AO3 I didn't find one story that had the two together. Which is a bit of a shock to me. I figured that with how loved Halo is someone would think of a good story idea for the two. So, after a few days of thought I try my hand at this. This is just a short prolog to the first chapter.
Now rules and limitations for this story.
First off Chief will not be getting any Starfield power ups. And frankly some of them were pretty stupid from what I've found. So, he won't be getting into them.
Second! He's going to be his own faction and not join with either the United Colonies or Free Star Collective. After learning more about them he would be dissatisfied with how both acted in wars past and not incline to humor the two. Especially given their laws on A.I. so that's a no.
Also, to any starfield players out there. What's your favorite faction and why?
See you next time, into the StarField!