Twelve: Aftermath

It was peaceful in the wake of so much death. Quiet, still. Even the animals brought aboard the Ark kept their calls to a minimum. The Infected communicated without words as they began organizing the survivors by species.

Most were children.

The Commander walked slowly along a terrace overlooking a garden in the FireRain. A group of his Infected were moving through the Gultanr survivors below, taking names, family lines, and planets of origin and giving out food, water, and the equivalent of blankets. Some were moved to be with still living family if they had been separated, but most were alone. They had been put on the evac ships by their parents and sent away to live while said parents stayed behind to die.

'The ecumene,' he thought to himself, 'the once-great Forerunner Empire, given dominion over all the galaxy by the Precursors who came before them. The UEG was better off than the Forerunner Empire is now – and after the Human-Covenant War, at that.' The Spartan descended to the lowest level of the garden and walked amongst the precognitive dragons the way the Librarian often did.

The aliens acknowledged him in their own way as he conferred with his subordinates. [What do you think?] he asked, [How long will it take for the galaxy to recover?]

'Forever.'

'What our ever-realistically depressing in-law means,' said Venera, shooting a mental glare at Nep'Thalia, 'is that physically it will take time. Lots of time, varying amounts depending on the places and people involved. Mentally…'

[Mentally, there is no recovery from a loss of this magnitude.] The Spartan sighed heavily, dropping his gaze. A small Gultanr looked up at him, clutching the blanket wrapped around her shoulders and holding tight to a well-worn plush of a cat. He dropped to one knee next to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

food

He bit back the impulse to strike when she leaned into the embrace he offered. She couldn't have been more than the equivalent of four or five, at most six; old enough to know that something terrible had happened but not to truly understand that everyone she knew was gone.

It reminded him uncomfortably of the S-II program. None of them had been old enough to understand that they could never see their parents again, no matter how mature Dr. Halsey believed them to be.

But the Gultanr were not human children. They understood better than most, had sensed the horrors to come, and fled in the face of them until there was nowhere left to run. "Are you our new parents?" the young dragon asked in her native tongue, voice high and soft.

After a moment, the Gravemind said, "Yes. I suppose we are."

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The first ships that were sent back into the Milky Way were entirely automated. The ancilla running them were the Foreunner equivalent of dumb AI, with very limited capacity for extrapolation, in hopes that they could evade the "logic bomb" poisoning of the Gravemind in the event it survived (unlikely, but one doesn't not plan for such an eventuality). They had been given strict instructions to simply observe, not make contact, and if any other than the residents of the Arks attempted to contact them, they were to refused the connection and depart immediately.

The Infected need not have worried. The Halos had done their jobs well – only small amounts of plant life remained in the galaxy.

The ships brought back images of their great cities. Some were in ruins from Flood assaults. Some were perfectly untouched. All were empty, and silent as the grave, but at least the refugees had somewhere to go back to.

When the Arks began their preprogrammed reseeding of the galaxy, the survivors went with the drone-piloted ships. Very few of the species were in any state to begin any kind of reconstruction, and those who were, were the ones who still had some sort of chain of command intact. Some of the Galactic Councilors had survived, and took up the responsibilities that had died with the Forerunner Builder Council in the Capital Complex.

The Chief listened to them squabble over the COM channels even as he sat in a three-way deadlock between himself, the Ur-Didact, and the Iso-Didact. Both the other Forerunners were glaring at one another without really glaring, trying to be subtle. It was clear that they had had a falling-out of sorts, but neither volunteered any information.

His eyes narrowed, prickling as if with tears as the pigmentation pulled back to reveal the Flood green of his true state. "One of you," he growled, "Explain. Now. Or I'm throwing both of you out an airlock."

The Ur-Didact pursed his lips around his small tusks. "I needed more Knights," he said at last, "to launch an offensive and buy time. So-"

"You think that is a valid excuse?!" the Iso-Didact interrupted, on his feet, "You Composed three-quarters of the remaining humans! All but a handful of variations are gone! Our wife-"

"I did what had to be done!" the original snarled back, also rising to his feet, "If I had not-!"

"The Fleet was two minutes out," said John, folding his arms, containing the burn of anger in his gut, "We could have diverted for support, would have done it and been happy to do so."

"We didn't have two minutes-"

"You," the Spartan hissed, slamming his hands down on the table, "and I both know that that isn't entirely true." He stood up, inhaling deeply to keep himself calm. "History resists change. All of us know that. I assume that means this happened in the Origin, too, but that does not mean I am okay with it under any circumstances. Humanity is my home species, and I will not tolerate any more attacks on them. I might not go quite as far as my half-kin, but we've all seen how well it'll turn out even on a localized scale."

The hybrid saw the Ur-Didact's jaw clench. At last, he tilted his head in acknowledgement of his claim and threat, and relaxed his stance, backing down. Bornstellar, the Iso-Didact, also yielded to the hybrid.

"Now is there any other business that absolutely cannot wait? We'll be completing this leg of the journey and dropping out of Slipspace at the galactic edge in less than an hour." When both of them shook their heads, he kicked them out of his office, mentally calling for some of his SpecOps Infected to keep an eye on them. [I don't want any Didacts killing each other on my ship.]

He sank back down into his chair, rubbing his temples. He heard the door hiss open in front of his second in command. "If you're here to chew me out for chewing them out, it can wait."

half kindred they stole our food from us

Nep'Thalia sensed his conflict, and lent her aid in suppressing the :hunger for vengeance:. "Actually," she said calmly, "I was wondering if you wanted help with that."

John looked up at her in surprise. She had a steely look in her eye that reminded him all too well of the twins when their blood was up. "I thought that my home species was better than this," she answered his nonverbal question, "taking revenge for perceived wrongs that no longer matter. We devolved your people and made you aware of it happening, set you back to the Stone Age, and then killed off all but the Librarian's samples with the firing of the Halo Array. That is Entulessë enough for me." She shook her head. "I had not thought my uncle capable of such pettiness."

"I don't think any of us did." John ran his fingers through his hair, then made a face. He quirked an eyebrow in a silent question. The Forerunner smiled in affectionate amusement and waved him off.

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It was times like these that the Chief didn't mind the fact that his commander's quarters were so luxurious, even by Forerunner standards. He scrubbed away the sweat and grime from his skin in the shower, then ran a bath hot enough to cook an ordinary human, climbing in to soak and sulk and think. The fleet needed a plan of attack. How were they going to go about reestablishing the entire galaxy? Humanity and the Covenant were starting over from literally nothing, so there wasn't much they needed to do there. With the rest…

It was a perfect time for a power grab.

John frowned. The longer the power vacuum left behind by the ecumene remained unfilled, the more likely it would be that someone – us – would step in and completely take over. There were not really many people capable of resisting right now, wracked with grief, and most of the survivors would have no idea where to even begin. They had never held a position of substantial power before, and more importantly about eighty percent of all the still-embodied species were under the age of majority.

all the more reason for it to be us

'This isn't the Insurrection,' he thought, letting out another sigh and imagining that the voices of his instincts went with it, 'We can't just take these kids and turn them into Spartans.' He reflexively braced himself against the side of the tub as the Storm transitioned out of Slipspace in a smooth glide. 'How the hell are we supposed to raise them? Some of us have experience with children, but it's not exactly a one-size-fits-all-species kind of deal. And we certainly can't bring them up all together all the time – there has to be some kind of separation period where they can spend time only with their native species – ugh, I'm giving myself a migraine."

He let his head fall back against the side of the tub, stewing in his thoughts. Then he jerked, head cracking against the metal –

Fire. Fire everywhere.

He could feel its searing heat flaring over his skin, threatening to damage his body beyond what he had the capacity to repair. The flames licked at his heels as he darted between the houses outside the settlement's market. The weather was dry and hot – had been for months – and a few rogue sparks had set every wooden structure in range ablaze.

And the Spartan himself was panicking in ways he never had before, ways he thought had been trained out of him. His instincts were overriding every conscious thought he tried to make, filling him only with the urge to :flee from death:. He did exactly that, sprinting for the edge of town as other lesser humans did the same, making for the open space that would slow the spread of the flames-

He came out of the vision high on adrenaline, heart pounding. He felt blood dripping down the back of his neck as he darted from the tub with a splash, putting his back against a wall. His eyes darted around the room. The skin of his neck tingled and crawled as the gash there pulled itself closed and sealed up.

"Fire," he hissed, hunching in on himself, "fire, why is it always fire?!"

I shall light this holy ring, release its cleansing flame and burn a path into the divine beyond

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"I temporarily split up the fleet after the assessment meeting that followed our arrival at Maethrillian, the former Capital Complex world," said the Chief, stirring his soup with an absentminded look on his face, "That was the last leg of our journey – the jump from the galactic edge to the Capital. It was still mostly intact, so all of us settled there for a while, despite the objections of some of the more conservative Forerunners." He coughed, but it sounded suspiciously like "Didact." His facial expression didn't change from its half-sarcastic mirth, but his eyes grew sad. "The galaxy's population had dwindled to the point where every survivor could fit on that one world, and everyone – even us, the Infected – could have their own house."

The Spartans, Doctor Halsey, and a few ODSTs were all listening as they ate dinner in a private mess hall aboard the Infinity. They were heading back to Earth now that the negotiations were through, with the Darkest Hour in tow. The rest of the FoS were going with the Forerunners to the aforementioned Capital, primarily for restocking their supplies.

"After everyone was settled in," he continued, "we started scouting out home worlds one at a time, seeing for ourselves what we had to work with, with regards to reconstruction. The Storm and the Darkest Hour handled that – they're both Forerunner destroyers – while the others stayed at Maethrillian for data mining. The Halos… screwed a lot of it up. Forerunner ancilla are great and all-" He twined his fingers with Cortana's under the table. "-but after Mendicant Bias went batshit insane and the Gravemind logic-bombed the rest to hell, there weren't exactly a lot of smart AI to go through what was left of the Capital." Then the Spartan snorted. "Not that there was much left, anyway. Most of the ecumene stored its data in the Domain, and so was almost entirely lost with its destruction. In fact, the most complete – if personalized, embellished, subjective – record of Forerunner history existed in our collective memories. It still is that way, actually, and it's still far from fully complete. Probably'll stay that way.

"Over time, we've been able to fill in some of the gaps, gather up bits and pieces of information that survived the collapse of the Domain. It was anchored to Precursor artifacts, which –" John paused, searching for the right word. "-dissolved… when they Halos fired. It was never explained to us, but something about the waves the rings put off broke the structures apart.

"But there still were – still are – some that survive. They are primarily in the Magellanic Clouds, though a few have been found in the intergalactic void. The last pieces of the Domain were anchored to them, carrying information from the Precursor era. Most of it we still don't understand."

"Was that why the Forerunners left?" asked Halsey as she made notes on her datapad, ignoring the Inifinity's deceleration, "To get direct access to these artifacts?"

"Yes," was the reply, "When the Halos were fired, they started broadcasting some kind of distress signal that was – for lack of a better term – telepathic. We finally picked it up about twenty-five thousand years after the Great Cataclysm. Some Forerunners left then, though the Ur-Didact stayed behind, as you already know. He-" John frowned, and turned to stare off into space, a concerned look on his face.

The other Spartans moved their hands to their weapons. Was it another Flood incursion? An attack by the P'Vort or the Innies?

"What the fuck is he doing?" the Commander demanded out loud, pushing himself to his feet and leaving the mess hall. The Spartans looked at one another, then fell in behind him. They hadn't heard him swear often before; whatever it was must have been pretty severe. "More importantly, what the fuck is he thinking?!"

He was apparently receiving responses of some kind, because his eyes grew distant as he approached one of the auxiliary COMs stations. He laid a hand over an input receiver, and after a moment, an image flickered to life on the screen. "What the fuck, Didact?" he demanded of the Forerunner on the other end.

"Ah, Spartan. I wondered when I would be hearing from you." The Iso-Didact waved at a massive piece of machinery being transferred from his ship to the Darkest Hour, settling on grav clamps in the cargo bay until it could be properly moved into its housing. "Payment for the smugglers, and the Senior Councilors who were backing them."

"I knew they couldn't have caused so much trouble on their own." Then he shook his head. "Don't try to redirect me! Have you taken leave of your senses?!"

"My last psychological profile shows that I am well within acceptable deviations. For now."

John was not impressed. "What a ringing endorsement. I am filled with confidence. But seriously, you can't just give us a Halo gun, no matter how many you have – we've already got-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what? A Halo gun?"

"The original twelve Halos," the hybrid explained, "were directed energy, not wide-field the way the current models are." He turned back to the Iso-Didact. "One does not simply give a Halo gun to the Flood!"

Bornstellar gave the Spartan a grave look. "I trust you," he said firmly, and his tone left no doubts in anyone's mind that he meant it.

John sighed and leaned back slightly. He knew through long experience that there would be no arguing with him once he'd made up his mind. "I don't trust me, but it's nice to know that someone else does," he said, and then cut the connection.