Fourteen: The Scout

[Ah, vacation.]

'Sir, this does not qualify as a vacation.'

[It does in my book. Any day where I don't have to deal with desk work is a vacation.] John sniped the Promethean Knight that had been fluttering about at the edge of his range. The digital being exploded in a satisfying swirl of golden flakes. The Spartan wriggled backwards a little through the false foliage of the holodeck, then moved about ten meters to his left around a spur of rock. That brought another Knight into view, which quickly went the way of its predecessor. [Bliss.]

'If you say so. Just be advised, we picked up an unknown transmission earlier that's still being investigated.'

[And if any progress is made, I'll halt my War Games to deal with it as necessary.] He turned his head away for just a moment, checking up with the twins. They were personally investigating the transmission, because it wasn't one they recognized. There hadn't been many changes since he last checked in, so he returned to shooting Prometheans.

The Gultanr had sensed that there was something coming some weeks ago, putting everyone on edge as they waited for that something's arrival. Some of the Infected had taken over one of the main byways through the Darkest Hour and turned it into a Flood hive, complete with growths on the walls and stumbling combat forms – their form of "battening down the hatches."

John growled and signaled for Fenix to terminate the simulation. The Prometheans and the battlefield dissolved around him, leaving him free to depart. He felt too restless to fight with a clear head, which could have gotten him seriously hurt.

'Slipspace disturbance detected.'

[How big?]

'Large enough to be at least one ship.'

[But it's not one of ours.]

'No, sir. It doesn't match any known signatures.'

[Etra, Úvë, swing around to face the estimated exit zone.]

'Aye, Commander.'

[Fenix, weapons hot.]

'Charging them now.'

Just as the Storm and the Into the Night settled into their new positions, an alien ship transitioned back into realspace with a slightly purple shimmer of light.

And it was definitely NOT one of theirs. It was all slippery organic curves rather than the Forerunners' mathematical angles and lines. Yet despite their differences, Slipspace reconciliation appeared to be universal – the ship was temporarily dead in space, hissing with silvery energy.

[Úvë, scan with everything we've got.]

'On it.'

The results streamed in. This was undoubtedly the ship that had triggered their warnings, but it was nice to have it confirmed at last. Their sensors registered a number of different life forms onboard. They also detected the ship's power returning, much faster than a Forerunner ships',warning lights flashing on along its length.

John found himself taking a step back, assuming a defensive stance with his fists protecting his face. Though his instincts said there was no danger – not like with the fire some weeks ago – he could feel that something was horribly wrong about the alien ship. He wanted it away from his home planet, wanted it destroyed, stripped down and dismantled at the atomic level.

A mind touched his own, groping about with extended claws. It was twisted, warped with sickness, distorted in ways that made the Spartan's bile rise. He retched; he had been trained to handle the horrors of war, but nothing like this. He withdrew from the connection with violent disgust, raising his mental shields to block out the corrupted influence.

"Fire all weapons!" he coughed, fighting the urge to writhe in revulsion. He recognized the way the mind he had been fractured and put back together – it was akin to what the enemy Gravemind did to its victims, the logic bomb virus, but from without rather than within. [Oh, Gods, the Didact!] The Promethean had come up against a Gravemind and come away with less pronounced damage, mere scratches compared to these gaping wounds. Had it contributed to his madness?

A single hard-light torpedo took down the alien ship's shields, but a handful more glanced off the organic curves of the ship.

[Laser-]

Etra switched the firing method on the turrets, while Fenix began working on a firing solution. But the alien ship was already counterattacking; one of the AI detonated the emergency thrusters to evade a shot that would have torn the ship apart. The missile tried to swing back around, but the momentum brought it too close to the sun. It fell into the star's gravity well and was lost.

The Night's lasers finished charging first, and lanced across the space between the vessels, blasting off parts of the other ship's armor and tearing holes in the hull. The Storm's weapons fired right into the gaps the Night's shots left behind, taking out parts of the superstructure. It also crippled part of the ship – the weapons and thrusters on the starboard side went dark. The enemy vessel swung around and brought all of its port weapons to bear on them.

The Fleet's AIs were already dropping the charge on their weapons, redlining the reactors and routing all power to their shields. They held, but only just.

The Darkest Hour accelerated into a slingshot around the moon, then fired its own lasers at the hole in the hull. The shot gutted the ship, and destroyed the reactor, causing a massive detonation.

:just dust and echoes… we're all that's left:

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The Infected waited for the solar wind to blow away much of the leftover radiation before sweeping the debris field. As expected, there were no survivors, but some of the systems at the front of the ship had survived with minimal damage. R&D was zealous but not crazy, and set up labs out in the debris field and did all their testing outside the ships before they even thought about asking to bring pieces onboard.

"The hull material," Lautrec reported, some weeks after the ship's arrival, "is structurally similar to our own, designed to minimize damage, to give and distribute force without breaking. But it's got flaws in it, as we saw. The material itself is synthetic, but the ship was put together by hand, which is where the flaws are."

"By hand?" Elenasto sounded as shocked as the rest of them felt, "That ship was built by hand? That's incredibly inefficient."

"Indeed. Despite the blast, when we took the remains apart, we were able to scan and index almost one thousand whole prints, and four times as many partials, some of which were matched to the wholes. Etra, if you please…" The AI pulled up the data as the Engineer continued, "There appear to have been at least thirty distinct species involved in the construction of the ship, some of which seem to be specialized. For example, this one has only been seen on circuitry."

"Is that a tentacle print?"

"Yes. We believe it might be a race similar to the Huragok."

John leaned back in his chair, looking over the scans. "Is there anything we know for sure?"

The Forerunner paused, then said, "You were right to strike first, Commander. They did not come in peace."

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The fleet was on guard for a number of weeks after that. Lautrec submitted his full report of the incident to the Galactic Council. Apparently, the remains of the ecumene had also encountered such a ship, but they had actually exchanged transmissions. The gist of those exchanges was that the alien attackers were the slaver version of the Covenant. Their unknown god had sent them to the Milky Way to take it.

John was recalled to the capital as a representative of his fleet and sat in the amphitheater in his dress armor, listening to politicians argue. Once they had learned that the fleet's shields had held against a single blast form the enemy's weapons, albeit barely, the vast majority of them were all for making more of their shield generators. The Spartan decided to let them, after he learned that when the Forerunners engaged the enemy, three of their vessels had been destroyed by a single shot.

He demanded under no uncertain terms that military vessels be outfitted with the new shields before any civilian craft, on the grounds that the military couldn't do a very good job of protecting civilians if they got destroyed right off the bat.

"I find it odd," he said as he left the council meeting, "that our fleet has more advanced shielding than the ecemene."

"The ecumene is powerful, yes, but not as entrenched in combat as we are, Commander," Nep'Thalia replied from her place at his shoulder, "Most of the rates stay separate from the dealings of the Warrior-Servants, save for the Lifeworkers. Unless a specific request comes in, the Builders don't even converse with them."

"Well, we've seen how well that's worked out. It's a proven concept." The Spartan sighed. "More wasted lives..."

The two of them stepped onto the transport that would carry them to the Storm. [How's it going over there?]

There was a heartbeat of a delay. 'Still quiet, Commander, but we're keeping a sharp eye,' L'Toress answered. She was back at Earth, and had temporary command of the fleet's other ships.

[No disturbances at all?]

'Not a one.'

[You'd think that when their ships dropped out of contact, someone would wonder what happened.]

'Maybe they already know.'

'Goddess dammit, Ursoen…'

'What?'

'You know how he gets!'

[Godsdamnit, scan everything. I have not survived this long by not being paranoid.]

'Eh, we haven't done a check in a while. Hop to it.' There was a collective groan. 'Suck it up, you pansies, he would have remembered eventually!'

[Especially when the electronic age rolls around – all those viruses and malware… No surfing the Internet without a firewall. New rule.]

'That we can do.'

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"I hate politics."

"The feeling is mutual, Commander. Politics hates an uncouth soldier." Elenasto sorted the authorizations he needed to sign to give the Builders and a team of Adonte temporary access to the Storm's shields. She passed the wafer thin pads to him and waited for him to skim them. He knew what they said, of course, but they had to check.

"I am not uncouth," the Chief grunted, "not anymore. And we Spartans aren't exactly known for our finesse in the political sphere. Or the social one, for that matter. We don't get out much." He scrawled his untidy "John-117" on the dotted line at the end of the first file and moved on to the second.

"You do fine with us."

"You're my people. I don't do well with people who aren't my people."

"That makes you sound like pets."

John scowled. "We are, kind of. Like the police canine units. We pursue the targets we are given because we have skills and abilities our handlers don't." His muscles flexed unnaturally under his armor, a prelude to their fairly new, weird form of shapeshifting.

"But… you aren't animals. You had rights, didn't you?" None of the Infected have ever actively probed into their own members' lives unless it was urgent, though John knew everything by default. Any information that was public knowledge was volunteered. They knew that their commander was a legendary form of super soldier in his own world, but not exactly what that entailed.

"That depends on your definition of rights. We were indoctrinated as children, taking away our freedoms of thought, conscience, and speech – and we were taken from our homes in the first place, a form of enslavement, nor were we free to travel where we liked. We could bear arms so long as it was in defense of the UNSC, and none of us were trained to care about religion." He tapped a finger against his desk. Then his lips quirked up a tad. "Except where the Covenant was concerned.

"And we're going to have to let it happen here, too."

Elenasto's – and everyone else's – hackles rose. "Do you regret it?" she asked, "The life you lived?"

"No. And I wouldn't give it up for anything. I only wish we have been treated with respect, rather than viewed as freaks." He frowned. "And now I sound like a whiney little bitch."

"At this point I think you've more than earned a little whining, Commander."