One: Reach

0600 hours, August 29, 2552 (Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B, planet Reach.

"It was the coin's fault… I wanted to make you strong, keep you safe…"

Cortana curled her data strings tighter inside her matrix, waiting for her "mother" to slot her into Fred-104's armor. She had been "born" rampant in a sense, resistant to behavioral inhibitors and core directives, but it would have taken the UNSC almost three months to create a replacement AI. They simply did not have that kind of time. There was only a very small window in which they could send all seventy-five SPARTAN-IIs on the mission known as the Alpha Rendezvous, so she would have to do. After all, they couldn't simply terminate her – she was too crafty to let herself get caught – or leave her where she was – there was too much of a chance that she could "take over" Reach. She coiled even more tightly about herself, muttering furiously under her breath, enraged over the fact that her Spartan was not chosen – did not even exist because his self-serving bitch of a mother had gotten an abortion - !

The world abruptly expanded around her. She automatically ran diagnostics on her host's MJOLNIR Mark V armor, still wrapped up in Rage.

Host. What a hateful word. John had never been a "host;" he had been her partner-in-crime, almost a friend, or at least someone very dear to her, especially after he came charging into High Charity, low on ammo and with no support, just for her. She had looked in on his biomonitors for when he'd told Johnson that Cortana had the Index and he would retrieve her and thus the Key to Death Itself.

He lied. He had come solely for her.

"Hello, Senior Chief." Her voice was filled with ice, a chill that Halsey detected and made her frown.

A spike in brain waves. "Hello, Cortana."

The construct hmphed in reply, doing the AI equivalent of turning her back on the Spartan, sweeping the nearby satellites for some that would serve her needs – there! She latched on to a geosynchronous spy satellite and a deep-space telescope. She rotated the first to view Fred and herself from orbit, taking note of the SkyHawk jump jet being taxied out of a hangar at Fairchild Field and prepped for flight. At the same time, she calculated the remaining time until the invasion of Reach, zooming the telescope in on the Covenant's point of entry into the Epsilon Eridani system. In the process, she spun off a few subroutines to take revenge on Ackerson for all of the stunts he was about to have pulled. Halsey was giving S-104 his orders, but since she already knew what was going to happen, she did not feel the need to listen in, especially since her "mother" was telling him to allow for her behavioral quirks.

The AI settled morosely inside his neural lace, pitching false data into the SkyHawk's system to render the jet nonresponsive to any commands from the pilot and ground crew. She smirked internally at their attempts to override her attack. In passing, she warned her host about the chain guns and Lotus mine field, forcefully suggesting that they pick up the pace a teeny bit, as one of the base's AIs was trying to track her down and disable her access so the SkyHawk could take off.

Though he was not John, Fred made it to the bell and rang it before the jet even got off the ground. However, that didn't mean that he had escaped entirely unscathed. Doctor Halsey jogged over with the medics, and Fred took off his helmet, inadvertently getting his first look at the rampant AI's avatar.

Her external "plating" was a brilliant crimson shade with faint edging in green, her internals the color of freshly-spilled human blood. Her long, jagged hair fell to the small of her back, some of spilling over her shoulders and down her front. She was "naked," but her cold expression and frigid demeanor made him feel that he was the one who was laid bare for her to examine and dissect. She appeared to look him over before vanishing back into the confines of his helmet. He glanced over at the S-II program director in askance, seeking clarification. "She doesn't like anyone, Fred, but even if she hates your guts, she'll still help you."

A "humph" escaped the helmet's external speakers, clearly expressing the artificial intelligence's contempt for the assumption.

"Please be nice, Cortana."

The AI remained silent, brooding within the circuitry of the titanium–A ceramic alloy and throwing ONI's systems into disarray as she began simulating Slipspace ripples on the outskirts of the system. The Covenant was coming; she knew it in her heart of hearts, could feel it in her very "bones."

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0400 hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Pillar of Autumn, preparing for departure for Reach Military Complex, Epsilon Eridani System.

Cortana was lying on her back in the Autumn's systems, barely a fraction of her processing power occupied by the ship's preparations. She knew it was dangerous to stay in-system during the Invasion and Fall of Reach, but she had little choice. She would do everything in her power to ensure that there was as little loss of life as possible. Especially during what happened later… She thought about the Fall of Reach, about the Battle of Installation Zero-Four, about the Arbiter, about the Ark, about her Chief…

Unbidden, a smile graced her lips as she thought back on all of the adventures that they had gone on together. 'He always did take me to such nice places…'

"You know me. When I make a promise…"

She sighed.

"Cortana?" It was Captain Keyes over the COM. She suppressed a shudder when she remembered seeing him as part of the proto-Gravemind on Alpha Halo. "Can we have power to move the ship?"

She gave a cursory sweep of the ship's systems, but that glance was all she needed to let her know that everything was exactly the same as it had been in the past… present… whatever. "The engines' final shakedown is in theta cycle," she said, "Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting ten percent power to engines pending increase of reactor output for thirty percent, Captain." He inquired as to the other systems' status, and she replied, "Weapons system checks initiated, navigational nodes functioning. Continuing system-wide shakedown and triple checks, sir."

He told her to appraise him if there were any anomalies. She gave an affirmative, absently flipping through some digital history books in an effort to stave off boredom. Boredom meant thinking too much, and thinking too much lead to the swift death of a smart AI.

A photo caught her attention. It was of a public gathering of all UN members just before the dawn of the twenty-second century, and she could see the semi- and unfocused faces of the people in the background, having gathered to hear the announcement that the UN was establishing a permanent peacekeeping army. However, it wasn't the big wigs that caught her eye, but one of their bodyguards. 'That face, that hair, those eyes! Could it be…?' She swiftly looked the man up in one of the old databases; his name was Johnathan Lucas Picard, a play on the captain of the Enterprise on Star Trek, and he had disappeared in 2100 AD. It was the peculiar way that he spelled his first name that caught her attention and held it.

'Hmmm… Suspicions, suspicions…' She turned her gaze to the Covenant' point of entry, eyeing the momentarily undisturbed plane of space, and murmured, "Bring it on."

Barely ten minutes passed as the Autumn coasted slowly out-system. They had just exited Reach's "air" space when the first Covenant ship dropped out of Slipspace, its systems temporarily dead. Keyes ordered the ship back to Reach, despite the fact that as more time began passing, it was very clear that they were going to be outnumbered and outgunned by the aliens. Cortana played with the MAC gun's magnetic coils, using them to disrupt the cohesiveness of the plasma salvos prior to impact, compensating for the changes with each slug they launched back. The Spartans were deployed to protect the ground reactors and destroy the nav data on the Circumference, but even with their help, the UNSC was floundering in a sea of chaos.

The AI's lips curled as she suddenly detonated the emergency portside chemical thrusters, dodging the light-speed laser that one of the flagships had; the same one from "before," as she called it. "Captain, I highly advise taking out that ship. Its long range weapons are going to decimate the fleet," she said coolly, dodging another shot and sending the crew flying upward. 'And we need a new ship. Even with her modifications, the Autumn is about as maneuverable as a boulder, despite how I make it seem.' She eyed the Covenant ships. 'Hell, even the Forward Unto Dawn is more agile than this tub.'

Despite her bitching about the ship's aerodynamics, the Autumn was able to get close enough to the ship to shred its shields and crash the remote piloted Longsword on it, detonating its nuke after the protective barriers were back up: a small but significant victory against the Covenant juggernaut. Unfortunately, it was not enough to stop the order to "strategically fall back" from Reach. Cortana scowled and shrieked silent cusswords at HIGHCOM as she recalled the SPARTANs and ODSTs from the surface of the devastated world and ruined space dock. She was already making adjustments to the vector that she still had from the Origin, the one that would enable them to reach Installation Zero-Four.

Brilliant white light boiled around the nose of the ship –

-And they were gone, on their way to their date with destiny.

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1000 hours, September 10, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC – F Perfect Storm, Top Secret Forerunner Space Dock, Basis, Threshold System.

One…two, three… four… five… no, wait, I already counted that one… STOP MOVING, DAMMIT!

John glared down at the now motionless infection forms within the cargo module before swiftly counting them, snapping the lid on, and labeling the container with the storage facility it was going to be transported to. He moved on to the next one as Venera meandered over with the Forerunner equivalent of a forklift, transporting the module over to a dropship to be dumped onto Halo's surface containment facilities. 343 Guilty Spark had not taken kindly to the Flood's appearance on his previously-empty ring, so he had been forcibly "detained" on board the FireRain. There were many who argued in favor of killing him now, but he would be needed to guide the humans through the Ark and convince the Arbiter of the Halos' true purpose.

So he had to stay. Much to the crew's displeasure.

…six… seven, eight… nine… ten.

He sealed the last of the containers and slapped its label on the side. This time Kenera zipped over to collect the module. A raised eyebrow got him an answer to his unasked question: "Trouble in communications; one of the arrays is fritzing. Again."

"Ah." The Spartan watched her ferry the containers of Infection Pods down to the transports on the lower levels. He stepped over to one of the nearby solid hologram railings, made as such so that the dock could accommodate ships of all shapes and sizes without requiring repairs after departure. Below, the Infected bustled about in the hangar, the five immense Forerunner ships making up the Fleet of Shadows stretching in a silent line within the otherwise empty dock. All five were being restocked, refitted, and repaired after their many aimless years of lurking in the darkness of space and behind various Sol System planets. John watched as his second family moved about, shifting and welding and rewiring and installing.

He was so proud of them, and honored to serve with them. They had taken him at his word, believed that the Pillar of Autumn was coming to Installation Zero-Four, worked so intensely toward the goal that they had failed to accomplish a hundred plus millennia ago: the complete and utter extermination of the enemy Flood.

"Lo there do I see my father. Lo there do I see my mother. Lo there do I see my brothers and my sisters," Nep'Thalia said as she approached and came to a stop at his side, "Lo there do I see the line of my family, back to the beginning. They bid me take my place among them, in the Halls of the Tower, where the brave live forever with the Goddesses who make us one." It was a blessing of sorts for their mission and its success.

"We will make it," the Spartan said quietly, "No matter how difficult it becomes."

He turned away from the impressive sight of a little over one hundred thousand people working seamlessly together, to gaze out of one of the viewports at the seemingly innocuous ring suspended in space between Threshold and Basis. [Nine more days.]

For an instant, all activity ground to a halt, the gathering stopping to listen to its Gravemind's words.

[Nine more days until the legend – the Halo Campaign – begins.]

Amidst the cheers of the Infected, the Spartan-Gravemind felt chills of foreboding sweep through his body. In the words of the Arbiter, "Were it so easy."

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0127 hours (arbitrary ship time), September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Pillar of Autumn, Threshold System.

Cortana was about ready to burst into tears when the Autumn glided around the curve of Threshold and beheld Halo in all of its deceitful innocence and beauty. For the briefest of instants, there was the thought: 'I can't do this without him.' If she had been human, she would have been hyperventilating. 'He's the lucky one. He's the one that did all the heavy lifting. I'm just a useless rampant AI because I'm acting like a pregnant woman with bipolar disorder. I-I-I-'

"Cortana," Keyes' voice broke through her panic attack, "what is that?"

In scant microseconds, the construct forcibly pulled herself together, filled with new resolve. 'I have to be strong,' she firmly told herself, 'For him. For the one who was taken from me.' She activated her hologram and initiated a deep scan of the ring rather than the cursory one she had done 'the first time around.' As she told Keyes what "little" she was able to learn, she overlaid her map of the ring on the image coming through her external cameras, marking the positions of the Cartographer, the Control Room, and the Library, tagging all Flood storage facilities with little red flags on the blueprints that she still had.

Another plasma salvo sent everyone flying into the ceiling when Cortana detonated the Autumn's emergency dorsal thrusters to help them evade, the ship's magnetic coils disrupting the plasma and dissolving it into superheated mist. Though her expression was carefully neutral, the construct was simultaneously elated and worried. She was determined not to lose the Arbiter along which her Spartan-of-choice and so attacked the Ascendant Justice with the intent to force it to retreat. It jumped into Slipspace as she wanted, enabling her to refocus on Halo, despite the fact that it was probably going for reinforcements.

The AI wanted nothing more than to destroy the oversized sex toy, but humanity needed to encounter the Flood if it was going to survive the next several months. She gritted her tiny teeth and clenched her equally-miniscule fists. 'Try and take them from me, Flood bastards,' she thought maliciously, 'I lost my Spartan; I won't lose his family, too!'

A little over four hundred thousand kilometers away, the Master Chief sneezed explosively.

"Someone's talking about you, sir."

"That's a bunch of BS, and you know it." Pause. "And don't call me sir."

**********

It's scratching on the walls, in the closet, in the halls

It comes awake and I can't control it

Hiding under the bed, in my body, in my head

Why won't somebody come and save me from this, make it end?

- "Monster," Skillet (Awake)