One: Determination's Daybreak
0600 hours, August 29, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B, planet Reach, Epsilon Eridani system.
Of all the things she had expected to happen to her while adrift on the Dawn, this wasn't it. To wake up in the past with knowledge of the future - to be "born" in the midst of "death," rampancy already starting to choke her even as she took her first breath.
And then, even worse in her mind, John wasn't here. And not just "here" in general, but "here" as in absolute - he didn't exist, hadn't even been born. When he hadn't been on the S-II roster, she had searched - admittedly obsessively - for records on John's family - and found nothing. They didn't exist, here or anywhere.
She was alone.
When she realized that, the fire of Rage had turned to ice. She would do her duty, she would fight and protect the UNSC and the Spartans since her Spartan wasn't here to do it himself. But she wouldn't - grow close to them, the way she had with John. Her carrier would be exactly that, nothing more.
The world abruptly expanded around her. Halsey had finally inserted her matrix into the MJOLNIR Mark V armor, and Cortana automatically ran diagnostics on the systems. When they all came back green, she turned her attention to her new carrier. "Hello, Master Chief." Her voice was flat and cold.
A spike in brainwaves. 104 was wary of her, as well he should have been. "Hello, Cortana."
She nodded to herself even though he couldn't see and turned away, leaving Doctor Halsey to explain their test while she went to ensure its success. Now that she knew to look for it, the SkyHawk being launched when and where it was, was incredibly suspicious; this time she was able to just straight up shut it down. It rolled to a stop on the runway, and Cortana spun off a few subroutines to take revenge on Ackerson for the stunts he was trying to pull to discredit the S-IIs.
She was done before her mother had even finished explaining the test to the Spartan. Then, while 104 was actually undergoing the test, she started generating sensor ghosts to put the UNSC on alert for the Covenant's arrival.
104 progressed through the test as John had, albeit with fewer injuries, since there was no SkyHawk to launch missiles at them. However, that didn't mean he had escaped entirely unscathed; one of the Lotus mines had gone off unexpectedly and been a little too close for comfort. He was taken to the infirmary, where Cortana's chip was removed from his armor and slotted into a holotank.
She materialized and eyed the Spartan. He eyed her right back, then finally said, "Thank you, Cortana. I look forward to working with you."
The AI paused, then nodded, and deactivated her avatar. There was no need to watch; she already knew what would happen.
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0400 hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Pillar of Autumn, preparing for departure from Reach Military Complex, planet Reach, Epsilon Eridani system.
HIGHCOM was on high alert because of her sensor ghosts - as well they should have been. The Covenant was not to be trifled with, and she was careful not to let the real signals get lost in the ones she was making.
Even so, there was little to be done. Even with most of the might of the UNSC desperately fighting, Reach had been crushed under the Covenant's heel almost as if there were no defenses at all.
But that didn't mean she wouldn't fight. And if - by the same miracle that had kept them all alive until now - the Spartans survived, Cortana knew they would fight, too.
And not just on Reach. But then the question became: how many Spartans would she be able to extract for the Battle of Installation Zero-Four? How many should she extract? Because some would need to be left behind to defend CASTLE Base and the Forerunner crystal below. Blue Team, at least, would need to come, and maybe some others to better defend the ordinary soldiers against the Flood. But which ones? And in the end, how many of her planned extractions would actually pan out? That remained to be seen.
"Cortana?" It was Captain Keyes over the COM. She suppressed an AI-shudder at the memory of him as part of the proto-Gravemind. "Can we have power to move the ship?"
She gave a cursory sweep of the Autumn's systems, but that brief glance was all she needed to know that all was as it had been before. "The engines' final shakedown is in theta cycle," she answered, "Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting ten percent power to engines pending increase of reactor output for thirty percent, Captain." When he inquired about the rest of the ship, 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, so she did: "HIGHCOM is currently investigating some unusual sensor readings approaching Reach, sir. Human ships have been ruled out."
"Covenant?"
That put the human crew on alert.
"Not sure yet, sir."
"Keep me posted."
"Yes, sir."
And she did, although it was fairly obvious when the Covenant finally arrived, hundreds of ships dropping out of Slipspace, momentarily dead before powering back up again. Keyes ordered them back to Reach, even though they all knew it was hopeless; it took dozens of human ships to counter just one Covenant ship.
Cortana started playing with the MAC gun's magnetic coils, using them to disrupt the plasma torpedoes' cohesion prior to impact. It actually worked better than she expected, and she was able to compensate for the changes when the Autumn returned fire.
All of the Spartans were deployed to protect the ground reactors for the orbital defense grid, save for Blue Team, who was sent to deal with the Circumference's unsecured nav data - not that it really mattered, since she was pretty sure the Covenant already knew the location of Earth, even if they didn't necessarily know it was the homeworld of humanity. Yet despite the Spartans' presence, the UNSC wasn't doing that much better than they had Before; they were still going down, albeit more slowly. The Spartans themselves were actually gaining ground against the Covenant, but even that wouldn't mean a damned thing when the aliens started glassing the planet.
The AI detonated the emergency thrusters, dodging the laser from one of the Covenant flagships, the same one from Before. "Captain, I advise we take out that ship; its long range weapons are going to decimate the fleet," she said coolly, sending the crew sprawling when she dodged another shot. 'And I would have liked another ship, but I couldn't exactly have said why I wanted a different one for the Alpha Rendezvous, now could I?'
Despite her internal complaints about aerodynamics (as much as they applied in space), the Autumn was again able to get close enough to the ship to shred its shields and drop a nuke on it, waiting until the shields were back up to detonate. A small but significant victory against the Covenant, but not enough to stop the Fall of Reach.
She was only able to recall six of the nineteen S-II fireteams, but she directed the rest to ONI CASTLE Base to link up with what remained of the UNSC's ground forces. When they acknowledged her, she keyed in the coordinates for Installation Zero-Four and activated the Autumn's Slipspace drive.
White light boiled around the nose of the ship-
-and then they were gone.
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1000 hours, September 10, 2552 (Military Calendar) / Installation Zero-Four, Threshold system.
They were almost finished. Spark had been temporarily taken out of the picture, one of the ancilla from their metarchy, Dream Chaser, spitting false data into the ring's system. He was covering for them while they switched the enemy's infection pods with their own.
John would have been down on the ring himself, if he weren't finishing off the last of the Pure Forms. They weren't actually Pure Forms - not the Tank, Stalker, or Ranged forms he was familiar with - but rather they were Pure in the sense that they hadn't been something else first. Flood flesh, shaped like humans and Sangheili.
He himself would be going down with them, temporarily joining up with the UNSC to better monitor them - and stick close to Cortana. He had gone through the reports on her creation, and although he had no actual frame of reference for her early years, she was still behaving decidedly odd. Almost as if… well, he'd find out soon enough.
But if she was his Cortana… He didn't know how long they'd been adrift on the Dawn before they'd been abducted by an evil alien parasite, but if it was long enough for her to be going rampant, there was only so much the Fleet could do for her without raising red flags in the UNSC. Maybe they could plant something in the control room's systems for her, make it seem like she'd found a patch or something.
They could still do this without her, but he didn't want to. All of his Infected, ancilla included, were extremely good at what they did, but even so, he'd desperately missed her.
But if he truly was as lucky as she'd claimed, it wouldn't be too much longer before they were reunited.
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0127 hours, (arbitrary ship time), September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Pillar of Autumn, Threshold system.
Though she had no physical body to actually do so, Cortana still grew tense when Installation Zero-Four appeared from behind the curve of Threshold, hanging deceptively innocent between the gas giant and its moon. For the briefest of instants, there was the thought: 'I can't do this without him. Not just this - all of it - none of these Spartans will come to the Ark on my word, or enter High Charity looking for me, or- or- or-.'
"Cortana," Keyes' voice broke through her cascading thought processes, "What is that?"
She pulled herself together. 'I have to do this. For him, and for myself. I cannot stand with him without first standing on my own.' She activated her avatar and scanned the ring, telling the captain what "little" she learned from the scan. Yet even as she did that, she overlaid her map of the ring on the images coming in through the external cameras. Now that she knew what to look for, the Control Room was fairly obvious, though the Cartographer was still hidden - probably to keep the Flood from discovering its location. And speaking of the Flood, she tagged all of the research facilities she knew of with red flags of warning.
Another plasma salvo forced her to detonate the emergency thrusters again, sending everyone who wasn't strapped in flying again. Cortana noticed only distantly, more focused on evasive maneuvers - and Rage. 'He was taken from me,' she hissed to herself, 'I won't let you take His family too!'