Four: Total Recall

"He still functions well, even without his construct."

"He didn't take a replacement?"

"We would need a Contender-class ancilla to take her place if he wants to retain full functionality. Those are few enough in number and high enough in demand as it is, and I highly doubt that he would have quite the same relationship with the replacement. For the moment, at least, he can operate without her."

The Didact and the Librarian watched from the control center as the subject of their conversation led a squad of Forerunner Warrior-Servants through a series of war exercises against a Flood simulation. The Spartan was still learning how to use the many strange abilities that the Gravemind abused with such ease, but he was getting faster at infiltrating security systems and communicating via direct connections with their broadcast towers.

"How many lesser ancilla would it take to compensate for her?"

"She was the only ancilla of a major warship – at least two Metarch-class, or ten base-level, if not more. Attempting to upload so many into his armor – ours or what he arrived in – would bog it down and cause it to lag in the best case. Perhaps the number could be decreased as they grew used to working with one another, but no less than five. That would compensate for her processing power, but not her speed – or her emotional value."

The Didact looked at his wife. She was smiling faintly, watching as the Chief gunned down three false combat forms in as many seconds.

"He doesn't love her," she said, "Not yet. But he will." Sensing her husband's disbelief, the Librarian slid a hand into the crook of his arm. "Is it truly so strange? Are our races really so different? Before the two of us, there were those who said that there would never be love between the rates."

"He is both human and Flood," the Promethean said stiffly, "neither of which are predisposed toward compassion or affection."

"Melda!" The Lifeworker frowned up at the Warrior-Servant. "You asked me, many times, why the humans were so violent in their takeovers of our worlds. They weren't aggressive without cause – they were desperate. The Parasite was chasing them into our territory. Now we have our answer – now we have our proof. And we've gained a powerful ally in the process."

"It seems counterintuitive to rely on a human for help."

"That, too, shall pass." She leaned her head against her husband's arm.

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Forerunner world designated 'Lamentation of the Earth,' early morning, August 105351 BCE.

"It happened here. This was where our peoples made first contact."

John didn't need Venera to tell him that. Even as a human, he could have detected that this seemingly innocuous plain had once been a battlefield. Having been on countless numbers of them himself, he knew that the soil beneath his feet had tasted blood, both human and Forerunner. Even the air itself seemed to carry memory of the violence that took place a scant five thousand years before. Out of respect for their dead, the victors had never repopulated the planet, though some of the nearby systems were being used for mining ventures. Even animals rarely ventured out into the tall grass.

A glimmer caught the Spartan's eye. When he knelt to pick it up, it revealed itself to be a warped piece of armor – human, not Forerunner. By now, he knew all of the forms their constructs took in their attempts to mirror the artifacts the Precursors left behind. Humanity followed its own set of visual aesthetics.

John clenched the bit of metal in his fist, then straightened. Standing amidst the remains of a war indirectly started by the Flood only made him all the more determined to make sure that no other species were evicted by the parasite. The scale of it all had been enormous, and even now, five thousand years after it ended, the Forerunners were still recovering from the fighting. Humanity's capacity for war then made the UNSC's resistance against the Covenant look… pathetic.

The Warrior waded deeper into the high grass, moving slowly so as to observe all he could. The sun shone on the plain, the angle of the early morning light making it look like he was walking through a field of gold. It was broken here and there by small copses of trees, rimmed on one side by mountains thrown up by some kind of blast wave. They stretched up into the clouds, and made him wonder who it was that had fired on the world.

Venera and Kenera watched silently a fair distance behind him, standing next to the transport that brought them down to the surface. He got the impression that they were paying their respects to the dead. At last, Kenera said, "Our parents died in the initial strike. We were off-world at the time, visiting some relatives who lived in the Capital, Maethrillian. We came home to a smoking ruin. The Didact and the Librarian took us in, because they had lost all their children in the fighting, and by the time it was all over, we had no family left." The stronger of the two met his gaze when he turned to face her. "It's not your fault, you know. You couldn't control the actions of your ancestors, and they had no time to explain themselves."

He nodded in understanding. "But that doesn't make it right." He opened his hand and looked at the relic of the war. "The Flood has caused so much suffering, directly or not. If we don't stop it, things like this will happen again and again." He waded back through the grass, and they departed the planet. If the Didact was surprised to hear from him so soon after their last comm call, he didn't show it. "This isn't where first contact with the Flood will be made, but it will become a major battleground again," the Spartan said, cracking his fingers just out of sight of the display, "It feels… like the land has tasted blood, and wants to do so again."

"I see." The Forerunner folded his hands under his chin. "My influence is waning fast, Spartan. I'll have the planet placed on watch, but I cannot guarantee that it will hold."

"Something tells me it won't matter."

All are food in the end.

The Promethean knew enough of his mannerisms to notice that his instincts were whispering again. "Have you been meditating?" he asked.

"When I can." The Spartan dropped his gaze, rubbed his palms together in a faintly restless motion. "It helps, though not by much. Just working them out seems to help a lot more. I get combat training, and they get to wreak havoc on various battle simulations."

"That sounds like the Flood." The Didact shook his head. "Do you conduct these sessions in the presence of others?"

"Supervision, yes. Not with them actually with me on the holodeck."

"Good."

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The blue glow of the Forerunner construct painted the Chief's MJOLNIR armor in an almost aqua hue. Through the three-inch transparasteel protecting it from damage, it looked almost surreal, like a painting, knowing that over four thousand years ago, that had been his life. Had been all he'd ever known.

He smiled bitterly. 'Do I even know how to speak Standard anymore?' he asked himself, 'Am I even fit for battle by the Spartan Program's standards?' The Chief traced his service number on the glass.

Becoming Infected had refreshed a lot of memories he thought he had forgotten. He remembered his mother and father, his life before becoming a Spartan, before he was simply "Sierra-One-One-Seven."

John closed his eyes. Although he resented it being done – now, at least – he understood why Doctor Halsey and ONI had kidnapped him and the other Spartans. Any anger he felt had cooled into a quiet mistrust and continual questioning of orders and motives, and sorrow that humanity had been driven to do such unethical things in order to protect itself, both from without and from within. Life with the Forerunners had given him quite a bit of perspective.

The sky blue lights of the floor below him and walls around him turned violet as it passed through his lids. He opened them once more when he sensed movement in his direction.

It was the twins, unusually quiet. They looked perfectly in place, their silvery hair and gleaming armor matching the burnished metal of the high ceilings and straight halls. Their eyes were almost the exact same shade of blue as the light given off by the energy streams being routed through the Didact's ship. They were still in their third mutation, the forms he had first met them in some four thousand years previously, though the Spartan knew that their people went through as many as ten mutations before their deaths.

Was it possible for infected Forerunners to undergo mutations? John mused briefly on the subject. No living Forerunner had even gotten close enough to an infected one for long enough to perform the procedure, and there was no reason the enemy Gravemind would mutate its own victims. He supposed they were stuck, then decided that that train of thought had no real purpose and set it aside. "Yes?"

"Ferial sent us," Kenera said softly. Her twin followed with, "She said you seemed to be having some sort of crisis."

"Am I real?"

Both of them frowned, and tilted their heads in confusion. "Define 'real,'" Venera said.

"Do I exist? Am I really Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN John-117 of the Origin? Did all of that-" He waved a hand to indicate all that had transpired in the Origin alternate universe. "-really happen? Or am I just a monster playing at being human? The UNSC can transfer memories between flash-cloned brains, so it's not too much of a stretch to think that some random gods could create entirely fake ones."

"You are no monster, Warrior," Kenera said firmly, her tone leaving no room for argument, "Even if the Origin wasn't real, a true monster would not be worrying over it the way you are. A true monster has no form of sanctity for life. Yet here you are, preparing to go into battle against your false kin in order to defend life, and not only that of humanity. If anything, we Forerunners are the beasts, because we set what few of your people remained back to the Stone Age before asking ourselves why you were fighting."

The Chief blinked, then looked at Venera. "Has she said that much? Ever?"

"Just because I prefer to let her do the talking does not mean I cannot articulate myself, Spartan! And who are you to accuse me of not being verbose?!"

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"And these will be mine?"

"Indeed. Unfortunately, they are being custom-built to spec rather than with a design seed. That means they will take longer, but it will just give you time to choose your crew." The Didact observed the Spartan as he ran a hand over a segment of metal polymer. It was essentially a hybridization of metal and rubber to give it both strength and flexibility, durability and impact absorption. Almost everything in the as-yet-unnamed fleet was highly experimental even by Forerunner standards, but John had volunteered to put it through its paces for them. If it worked, it would be put into general use. If it didn't, they would try something else.

John looked up. The framework of his ship – and deities above, wasn't that a change – stretched seemingly forever in all directions, a morass of metal struts and arches that shimmered in the stark blue-white lighting of the space dock. There were five such frames in the otherwise empty dock, held in place by the same gravity beams that he recognized from the Halos. Sentinels and Huragok were crawling all over the place, preparing the frames for the next phases of construction.

"This is the flagship," the Didact was saying when the Spartan refocused on him, "and the weapon we discussed a few years ago? Some of my personal ancilla managed to work out the physics for it. It will be integrated in after the outer hull is finished and the shielding and active camouflage systems are online."

"The one involving dark matter and dark energy?"

"The very same."

About five years ago, the Warrior had had a thought after hearing about the stellar experimentation that rendered the original Forerunner homeworld, Ghibalb, uninhabitable, forcing them to move to the Soraceon System. He wondered if it was possible to artificially induce supernovae – or black holes, if worst came to worst – to take out known Flood-infested systems as a form of asset denial. Remembering once more the terminals on the Ark, he mentioned the possibility to the Didact, who agreed to look into the matter while the Chief was hammering out battle simulations for the Prometheans with the help of a dozen ancilla. He returned with various theories about how it could be done, most of which involved suicide drones flying high explosives into the sun, firings said explosives from a distance, or directed energy weapons (which were their last resort; they would take the longest and the most energy to induce a stellar collapse).

"I had no idea the Forerunners were capable of being so crude."

"Even we have our limits, Spartan."

"Is there something natural we could use? Something we could gather from ambient space that wouldn't risk blowing the ship to smithereens if we got shot with our shields down? Like that – that stuff that can only be seen when light bends around it because of its gravity? Dark matter, I think?"

"Hmm… I'll run it by a few people."

It worked in theory. It had taken the ancilla awhile to work out the physics behind such a machine, even longer to develop a means of handling the kinds of loads needed to cause supernovae. Then it took even longer to gather and manufacture the necessary materials without anyone getting suspicious and doing some investigating. They couldn't use a design seed – the way most Forerunner ships were constructed – because of the size of the ships, the amount and unique composition of the materials needed, and the complexity of the machinery. The ships were also rated for atmosphere, so they had to be specially engineered to withstand reentry into any form of atmosphere at the most impossible angles and approach vectors.

And the ancilla that would run the ships… Well, none of them were Contender-class, but there would be one Metarch-class ancilla on each ship. Five all told – and while it was a small number, that was more than there were in existence at the time, much less in one place. They would monitor every inch of the ships – each one at least twenty kilometers long – and keep track of the crew. The Spartan had already stated that he wanted his crew to be multiracial, not just multirate.

"The larger the knowledge base and cultural backgrounds I have to draw from, the better able we'll be to combat the Flood. Diversity makes for unpredictable opponents."

more food for thought

John closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, letting the breath out at the same snail's pace when his lungs were filled to capacity. 'I will not be infecting my subordinates,' he thought firmly, unconsciously reaching up to rub at the engraving in his Forerunner armor. It was still fresh, and "itched" faintly at the back of his mind. It was the mark of his new honorary – John snorted inside his mind. ' "Honorary," my ass.' – rank in the Forerunner military, second only to the Didact himself and technically an army all his own. He had been surprised – well, as surprised as a Spartan could get – when the Promethean himself suggested it. "Were you anyone else, I would not be so comfortable offering such power. But we are both the same type of soldier; to obfuscate the truth is to cause deaths that could have been avoided. For the moment at least, I trust you."

'What have I done to earn the trust of the Forerunner military's commander in chief?' He followed the Didact out of the frame to let the Sentinels and Huragok resume their work. "Why is it that you personally brought me here? You could simply have assigned this as a mission for the twins."

"The Council still refuses to acknowledge the existence of the Flood, claiming it to be some stellar disease, as you said they might," the Didact responded, "They have begun disarming the Warrior-Servants and me once more, as they did some twenty thousand years before the human-Forerunner wars. And without an enemy to fight…" He shrugged, a very human gesture. "I have nothing but time."

Time has taught me PATIENCE-

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The ancilla guarding the census rosters of the Forerunners were formidable in their own right. But against him… well, he was no Cortana, but they crumbled quick enough against his onslaught, granting him access to the lists of potentials. The first people he marked off as "wanted" were the twins, if only because he was comfortable with them and knew they could take care of themselves. A tentative check on Gramlek, whose name translated literally as "Hunter;" as one of the foremost Forerunner weapons experts, he would be able to keep the fleet armed an armored, but at the same time the Spartan didn't want to force him and earn his enmity. Another tentative check, this one on Nep'Thalia, "Tower Sprite;" she was a good, well-organized officer, level-headed and reasonable, but she was also the Didact's niece through marriage, her husband killed in the human-Forerunner wars. The "gods" of the Covenant had a long memory and were perfectly capable of holding grudges.

Areana, an elderly Lifeworker whose name meant "Starbound," was added to his list right after Nep'Thalia, along with her support personnel and some Lifeworkers she had personally trained. She had taught the Librarian many millennia ago and provided the patterns for one of her mutations, so she had to be doing something right. Next was Ursoen Hahen, "Unbending Shard," a close-combat expert who had worked closely with Gramlek in the past. The Flood was naturally a close-combat evil alien parasite, so it made sense to train everyone to be able to physically fight them off in the event of an emergency. His wife Thenma ("Moon-Crier") and their daughter Harena ("Sliver of the Moon") were also added to the list.

The Spartan had to be careful not to take all of the elite Forerunners away from their respective rates, or there would be no one left to defend the empire from the Flood. The Warrior-Servants were probably the most important of all, because they would actually be on the front lines.

A thought occurred to him then – it wasn't only biologicals he needed. Ungracefully, he wormed his way through the systems with his half-finished list, then hijacked a deep-space transmitter to broadcast it to the Didact to see about getting the "Chosen Ones" reassigned. Then he said, "What can I get in the way of AI? Ancilla, I mean. Besides the ones that will be running the ships."

"Most Forerunners have lesser ancilla integrated into their armor, though nothing quite as powerful as the starship ancilla you carried. Cortana, her name was?"

"Yes."

"I can feel your concern for her from here, Warrior. You have defied the odds before. Perhaps some of your luck will rub off on your veri."

John blinked. "My what?"

"Your veri, your wife. Forerunner society has never had such a close physical, mental, and emotional bond between an ancilla and its – her – bearer, and so have no word for such a bond. The closest refers to a spousal bond, a 'mind meld' that psy-enabled Forerunners, such as myself, use to better detect the presence of our spouse within the Domain."

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"So does this mean that Cortana and I are also – erm, 'married?'" Fred asked, examining a suppressor that the hybrid had brought for them from the Fleet of Shadows' armory.

"Veru is a husband and wife in Forerunner. It literally means 'married pair,' though it can also refer to the husband alone. And no, technically, you're not." John passed a binary rifle to Linda. "Cortana had to use a substantially greater number of buffers to interface with you, in order to compensate for her rampancy. That brought you to about the same level as most Forerunners and their AI."

"So we're married," said the aforementioned rampant artificial intelligence, giving the rogue Spartan a look that said she didn't believe a word of it, though her eyes said differently. She was messing with one of the Security Crawlers.

"On an extreme technicality and equivalent shotgun wedding, yes. Why, do you not want to be?"

"I never said that!"

The Spartans all turned to look at the AI.

"What?"

"Nothing." John then began broadcasting directly to her COM system. [Good. I'm a very possessive man, melda. Once you become mine, you stay mine.]

'Sounds like that's the Flood talking.'

[Just a little bit. But you don't want to know what it wants to do to you.]

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Glossary (Quenya)

melda – beloved (dear one)

veri – wife

veru – husband and wife, lit. married pair

Source – Ambar Eldaron English-Quenya Dictionary