| abstract | - Good thing he was off duty. The methane room was nearby, and he hobbled toward it, drawing a strange look from a Minor Jiralhanae. The next corner split in to two for a second, and he paused. A commotion broke out, and the small Unggoy giggled. Fights between the youthful Jiralhanae were all too common and entertaining. He made it to the corner, ecstatic that he would get to see the light show. He reached the corner and grabbed it to steady himself. Odd, the commotion seemed to have ‘’three’’ sets of lights from plasma rifles. He giggled as the lights set off a pleasurable storm in his mind. Then he noticed the green fog, a weird shape that moved fast, and seemed able to dodge most of the shots. When one did hit, it formed a splash on the giant, and set off an extreme storm in Jipfay’s mind. He didn’t want it to stop. It seemed like hours, but the battle was over in seconds, and Jipfay was left disappointed. The green giant stood up straight and looked at him, and Jipfay felt a pang of fear that almost broke through his fog. A Spartan, here, on the ship, the figures on his shoulder read something like D683. His trill of fear became a cascade of fear, and he backed away slowly, his reverie shattered. The giant stood there, and then slowly walked around the corner. Jipfay started breathing again, not realizing he had stopped, and he know what he had to do, warn everyone else that they were about to die. He spun on his heel and came face to face with another Spartan. No, this one couldn’t be the same, but… the numbers were identical. He never took another breath.
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* But do you know the question.
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* D683 kicked the body of the Unggoy. Small creatures, crushed underneath the weight of tyranny. They had so much potential, but he could not help them now. He slipped off his helmet and sat on one of the Jiralhanae bodies and grabbed a nutri-bar. He quelled the voices and slapped his helmet back on. Time to get back to work.
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* “Report! What is going on!” The surveillance officer turned to Chieftain Damen. “We don’t know, Excellency. Our cameras keep switching off then back on. And when they do, we find dead bodies. The latest report is four dead Jiralhanae, seven Kig-Yar, and two score Unggoy. On top of that, we have four Lekgolo down several minutes before that. It seems that this warrior is fighting his way through the whole ship, clearing the entire ship as he gets closer to us. He must be a Spartan.” “You don’t know the half of it.” Damen spun, and spotted four Kig-Yar already hitting the floor. He grabbed his Spike rifle and aimed at a green blur that was already engaged with two Jiralhanae guards. He fired, as did five others, and the Spartan moved. It back sprung and dodged all but one shot. It hit, and the armor’s shield flared. All the combatants paused, and the two Jiralhanae hit the floor. The Spartan straightened and looked up, staring straight at Damen. All of a sudden it bent its legs and leapt 6 meters in to the air, straight at Damen, who fired the rest of his magazine at the incoming Spartan. It flickered and disappeared. Damen watched the spikes soar right through where the Spartan should have been. Impossible, even if he had the newest active camouflage, the spikes should still have hit the Spartan and gored him. He heard a soft thump behind him, and spun around for the second time in ten seconds. And watched the last of his crew fall to the ground. The Spartan stood tall with its knife, above the body, apparently examining the cuts on the surveillance officer’s body. He looked up, straight at Damen, and slowly approached him. Damen felt a rush of fear, and backed away. Blood dripped from the knife blade. Damen missed the ramp and stumbled backwards, catching himself. Looking up, he saw the Spartan’s helmet filling his vision. “What do you want?” “I want you to live.” The Spartans fist crashed down on Damen’s head.
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* 2200 Hours, January 2nd, 2574 (UNSC Military Calendar) The next man who walked in to the bar was larger than most. Joel finished cleaning the glass he was holding and put his hand underneath the counter and was ready to grab the M5D pistol he kept under there. It was old, and never used, but it could put a whole in a man the size of a softball. The man glanced at Joel and approached the bar, sitting on one of the stools. “Yeah, it’s me.” “Know what you’re thinking? Because I know you.” “You’re very good. What do you need?” “I need to communicate with the Reborn Fire.” Joel’s heartbeat doubled. His eyes flickered over to the eight men sitting at two different booths. They were examining the man who had just entered, and had begun to shift in their seats. Joel blinked, and the men stood. Immediately the newcomer spun and grabbed a bar stool, smashing it in the face of one of the men, breaking his nose. Another whipped out an M6D pistol and fired at the newcomer, who flinched as the bullet bounced off his crystal weave body armor. The armor was very thin, and could stop ten-gauge buckshot or a 7.62 mm assault rifle round. The newcomer recovered and grabbed the pistol, twisting it around under the man’s chin and pulling the trigger. Joel was already out the back door, and sprinting down the alley. He unlocked the doors of his car and drove in. He placed his finger over the scanner and the car warmed. Just as he was about to floor the accelerator, the door was ripped off its hinges and thrown in to the street. It hit the front of a car and bounced off. The car pulled over and the doors popped open, with people yelling at the large man standing over Joel. Joel was ripped out of his car, and felt a blow to the arm. He screamed as his humerus shattered, and was thrown on to the hood of his car. Joel fought through his pain and looked up in to the eyes of Spartan-D683. “What did you expect to escape from? “Just like death, you can’t escape me. “Now tell me what I need to know. “Tell me you know what I need to know.” D683 leaned closer to Joel, and whispered to him as the angry people behind him approached him: “Tell me: where is Phoenix Team?”
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* 0547 Hours, January 3rd, 2574 (UNSC Military Calendar) Master Chief Petty Officer Wings-D339 strode through the new Interspecies Union Ragnarok class destroyer, fully armored, but with his helmet off, and attached to his back. The new ship surpassed anything the Covenant or UNSC had ever built. Huragok had provided the technical expertise, fine tuning the ships, while humans had provided innovation. The engineers, both human and alien, had outdone themselves, using a combination of human and alien technology. Two ODSTs stood to either side and saluted, “Sir.” “Sir.” Wings returned the salute and continued on his way. The halls weren’t very wide, being designed for function rather than aesthetics. Everything on the flagship had been minimized without compromising its ability to work, and yet the ship measured at over six kilometers in length. Publicly, it didn’t exist, but among SpecOps and ONI operatives, the ship was fast becoming a legend, even though it hadn’t even made its maiden voyage. Wings approached the entrance to his quarters, and felt a tingling in the back of his mind. It was that little bit of him that always knew something was wrong. He shifted his combat knife loose and keyed open his door, hand ready to unsheathe the knife. His foot hit the other side of the division on either side of the door, which immediately slammed shut. Now he was sure something was wrong. The door wasn’t supposed to close until he was three feet from it. And to get it to change you had to know every inner working about the security system behind it. And no one onboard that he knew could change it. In fact, there was only one person he knew that could do such a thing. He spun, his foot following his sight. It collided with an armored wrist, which was reaching to grab him. They both slammed against the wall, and another hand reached out to grab his ankle. Wings twisted, brining his knee up to his chest and grabbing the hand. His grip slipped and the attacker twisted. Wings fell to the ground, hard, and his attacked sprung on him. He spun, this time with his fist connecting to the side of a helmet, and the man flew a meter away from him and crashed in to the wall, momentarily dazed. Wings seized this opportunity and leaped upon him, grabbing him by his throat and lifting him against the wall, and punching him in the solar plexus, further dazing him. “Hello again, D683.” D683 tilted his head down to look at Wing’s face. “Hey there, Wings.” “What do you want.” “Just a chat.” Wings let go, and D683 dropped to the floor with a thud. Wings walked over to his desk and sat at the chair, examining his ankle. It was beginning to throb, but he judged that it was just a pulled muscle and let it throb, stretching it out. D683 stood and massaged his wrist. It was definitely sprained, and his chest burned from where Wings had punched him. The door slid open and Major Forge looked in at the two Spartans, both with helmets off now. He glanced between the two. Wings knew there’d probably be about twenty ODSTs behind him in the hall, and he held up a hand. “Just a surprise, sir. We’re good.” Forge nodded and backed out, and the door slid shut again. The two Spartans looked at each other. Wings spoke first. “Explain to me why you’re here, and why you felt you needed to attack me.” “Just a test, nothing more.” “I passed.” “Yes.” “Now what do you want here?” “I want you to tell me how to get in to the mind of a Jiralhanae.” Wing’s nose twitched, the Spartan equivalent of folding your arms and snorting derisively. “First of all, how would you get a Jiralhanae to listen to you before he attempted to ‘avenge his kinsmen’? Second, why would you want to get in to his mind?” “I have plans.” “You always do, it’s the way you work.” “So why not help me?” “After all that training, you’d think it’d be obvious.” “Not everyone sees the enemies as you do.” Wings ticked his fingers on the desktop and glanced up at the ceiling. “It’s easier to figure this out if you tell me what you want from him.” “I want him to defect.” Wings froze for an instant, and then resumed his tapping, examining D683. “You want a creature that has likely been brainwashed from birth to give their lives to a xenophobic cause, has been trained unwillingly to follow a rigid code, and has been unknowingly shifted to the lower end of the IQ spectrum, and you want to completely turn him around?” “But you could if you wanted to.” “Naturally, find me in a week.”
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