Chapter 32 - Chapter 32

23 September, 2552 – Low Orbit above Planet Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

Leonidas-151 POV

The moment Truth and Reconciliation tore out of slipspace, the bridge fell silent. No alarms. No comm chatter. Just the hum of the covenant drive systems winding down and the gravity well of Reach drawing us in.

But this wasn't the Reach we left.

Outside the viewport, the once-lush and fortress-wrapped planet now glowed with death. A third of the northern hemisphere still simmered with the aftershocks of Covenant glassing. What was left looked like cancer—pulsing, blackened terrain webbed with red veins of molten rock. New Alexandria was gone. Manassas? Dust. Camp Currahee? A charred crater. And the orbital defense platforms were shattered like glass or simply missing, vaporized or falling in slow arcs of decay. The world of Spartans was bleeding out beneath us.

"Three-fourths glassed," Halsey murmured beside me, voice barely audible over the ambient bridge noise.

Even John was quiet. Hands behind his back, helmet clipped to his belt. His stare locked on the abyss.

Captain Keyes stood at the front of the bridge, arms folded behind him, looking every bit the man holding this broken fleet together by will alone. Thirteen ships remained. Of the dozens that made up Reach's planetary defense force, only thirteen followed us home.

And home was burning.

"Sir!" one of the bridge techs snapped. "Picking up a transmission."

Keyes turned. "Put it on speakers."

A crackle. Then static. Then—

"Olly Olly Oxen Free…"

The bridge froze.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. That signal… That phrase.

Only one group ever used that signal. Not the Navy. Not the Army. Not ONI.

Spartans.

"Location?" Keyes asked, stepping forward.

"Castle Base," the technician said, disbelief thick in his voice. "Deep underneath Menachite Mountain. Coordinates match with ONI substructure buried six kilometers below the crust."

I met John's eyes. His expression didn't change, but his jaw clenched.

Cortana's voice cut in, calm but laced with something close to wonder. "That signal should not be transmitting. That facility was declared compromised and presumed destroyed after orbital bombardment."

Halsey's eyes narrowed. "Unless they survived it."

"Spartan Two protocol dictates a last-ditch distress call only when all other options are exhausted," I added. "If they're sending that… they're desperate."

"Can you confirm identity?" Keyes asked.

Cortana replied instantly. "Only one transmission cycle. But the vocal tag is clear."

A pause.

"Samuel-034."

I felt a beat skip in my chest. "Sam's alive?"

"That's impossible," Halsey whispered. "His convoy with Admiral Whitcomb was ambushed."

"No," I said flatly. "He was listed as MIA. Just like the rest of us would've been if we didn't make it off the ring."

"And he's not alone," Cortana continued. "The signal piggybacks a secondary encryption layer—ONI Section Zero. Admiral Danforth Whitcomb's ID tag is encoded within it."

Keyes exhaled. "Whitcomb. One of the few ONI brass who play politics. If he's alive…"

"Then they've been underground this entire time," I said, already processing options. "Hiding under Castle Base, below the crust—deep enough to avoid glassing scans and plasma bombardment."

"They must have used the FLEETCOM labyrinth system," Halsey added. "Reach has bunkers under bunkers. Deep vaults from the Insurrectionist Wars, buried black sites. Castle was the most secure."

John finally spoke. "Then we go get them."

Keyes glanced over his shoulder. "Let's not pretend this is easy. We've got thirteen ships, no orbital defenses, and a planet crawling with Covenant patrols. That signal could've triggered an automated beacon trap. Or worse, be a lure."

"I'd take that risk," I said. "For a Spartan? For Admiral Whitcomb? We don't leave them behind."

"Sir," the comms officer said, "we're still detecting Covenant patrols in low orbit. Their forces seem disorganized—no main fleet command structure. They're sweeping the planet, not defending it."

Halsey narrowed her gaze. "It makes sense. The Covenant believe Reach is already theirs. They wouldn't expect a human counteroperation."

I looked at Keyes. "Sir, give me a team. Spartan-led strike force. Small enough to insert undetected. We can land near Castle Base, confirm the source of the signal, extract the survivors—if there are any—and get back before the Covenant realize we're even there."

Keyes didn't answer immediately. He looked at John, then at me. The pressure of this war—of loss—was all over his face. This wasn't just about Sam or Whitcomb.

This was about proving Reach didn't die in vain.

"…You have your op," he said finally. "We'll remain in high orbit. Cortana will manage fleet evasions. You get in, get them, and get out."

John nodded once.

I did the same. "Yes, sir."

As I turned to leave the bridge with John at my side, the hum of the Truth and Reconciliation's engines followed us into the corridor.

Castle Base was still breathing.

And Reach wasn't finished just yet.

Spartan boots echoed through the hangar bay of the Truth and Reconciliation as the teams assembled. We weren't just running another hit-and-fade op—we were punching straight into hell with orders to come back holding the devil's jawbone and the survivors clinging to our backs.

John was methodical, clinical, and somehow faster than even my own strategic mind. He had this quiet, brutal efficiency when planning a strike—like war wasn't just something he did, but something he was. He moved between armor stations and data tables, issuing names like he was drawing from a loaded deck.

"Red Team," he said, nodding toward the Spartans already strapping into their MJOLNIR suits. "Frederic-104, William-043, Grace-093, Isaac-039, Vinh-030, Anton-044, Malcolm-059. You hold the line. Lock that mountain down and keep the Covenant off our backs. You know what this is—it's Castle Base. If they breach it, we lose everything."

Fred gave a crisp nod. "Copy that, Chief."

They were the best possible team to hold the entrance—a full Spartan-II fireteam with enough firepower between them to level a battalion. Fred's leadership. Will's force. Grace's unbreakable momentum. They were a steel wall.

John turned to me, then Kelly, then the others assembling around us. "Blue Team: Leonidas-151, Kelly-087, Li-008, Joshua-029, James-005. And me."

I spoke up. "Linda-058 is still recovering. She's coming with us. She can be stabilized once we reach the base. Halsey's coming too. If Castle Base is intact, it has the flash-clone facilities. We can get her repaired."

John paused a second longer than usual. I knew what he was thinking: we'd be moving into unknown territory with a civilian in tow. But Halsey wasn't just anyone. She was our civilian. Our architect. Our past. And potentially, our future.

"She stays tight to the middle of the formation," John said at last. "Cortana?"

"Here," she replied through his helmet comm. "I've compiled a layout of Castle Base based on ONI's redacted schematics. Most of the upper levels are collapsed or flooded. But the old labyrinth still has viable passageways to the AI cores and R&D chambers. Your best bet is through the south elevator shaft—deepest penetration, lowest enemy visibility."

"And the beacon?" I asked.

"Still broadcasting. Still Spartan-code authentic. Still coming from the central command deck, six kilometers below the surface."

John looked at us one last time. "We move fast. Quiet until we can't. Red Team locks it down, we extract the package, and we all come home."

It was a good plan. No, it was the plan.

This wasn't about recovering technology anymore. This was about the people still down there—people that had defied death, the Covenant, and the odds. Sam-034, a Spartan everyone thought was dead. Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, the brass backbone of ONI. And if Halsey was right, the survivors with them weren't just deadweight—they were critical.

ODST Corporal Locklear—explosives expert, battle-hardened, and just crazy enough to survive anything. Warrant Officer Sheila Polaski—Pelican pilot, sharp reflexes, sharper tongue. And ONI Lieutenant Elias Haverson—the kind of spook who knew how to play politics with one hand and fire a sidearm with the other. More than a dozen other personnel. Somehow, they'd made it. If they were down there with Sam and the Admiral, they were holding the fort for the rest of us.

Red Team loaded first, boarding their own Pelican—callsign Whisper Five. The ship rattled slightly as the hangar door cycled open for launch prep. Fred gave me a single look as the bay lights cycled red. No words. Just the silent promise between Spartans:

If we don't come back, hold the line anyway.

Blue Team followed. Our Pelican—Dagger Three—was already spooled and humming. Halsey was already inside, sealing Linda's cryo-chamber against the inner bulkhead. She glanced up briefly as I boarded, her eyes tired but burning with that same focused fire she always wore when lives were on the line.

I strapped into the seat across from John. Kelly was beside me, quiet as ever but fidgeting slightly. She always did that before combat ops—just small, subtle motions. I think it was the closest thing she had left to nerves.

Li-008 and Joshua-029 were prepping gear. James-005 was silent, visor dark, already running simulations in his HUD.

The ramp began to rise.

"Spartan teams Red and Blue, you are cleared for launch," came the voice of the Pelican deck officer. "Castle Base op begins now. Good hunting."

The last thing I saw before the bay doors sealed shut was Reach's burned atmosphere. The ghost of what this world used to be. The forge that made us.

And now we were diving straight into its heart one last time.

The smoke was old. Stale, caked into the fractured soil like the ashes of a burned book. What remained of Castle Base looked less like a military stronghold and more like the husk of a buried titan, its ribcage snapped open to the sky. Molten slag still steamed from shattered turrets and scorched entry tunnels. Covenant glassing hadn't hit here yet, but it had swept close—close enough to melt rock and boil steel.

We moved low through the wreckage, our boots ghosting over scorched ground, MJOLNIR sensors tuned to every vibration in the rubble. Castle Base was deep—six levels at least, maybe more depending on what the eggheads had built below our clearance. The surface structure was nothing but a charred tombstone.

Behind us, Whisper Five lifted off in a plume of dust and magnetic ion. Red Team began setting up temporary defenses—Fred's voice steady in my ear as he split his squad across sniper perches and wrecked perimeter bunkers.

"Leonidas, we'll cover your backdoor. If this goes loud, we'll delay them as long as we can."

I keyed my mic. "Understood. Get those Titans locked down in overwatch. And Fred—keep your exit clean."

We breached the outer blast door with a portable mag-spike. It peeled like a tin can, creaking outward into the darkness. Blue Team stacked and flowed in—Kelly and John on point, Li and Joshua sweeping flanks, James in rear security. Halsey trailed behind, helmetless under a sealed cloak, wheeling Linda's cryotube on a gravity sled.

The interior was cold.

Not physically. Psychologically.

Castle Base had always been… clinical. Cold floors, grey walls, sterile corridors. But this—this was death. No lights. No hum. Just the groan of bent steel and the whisper of wind funneled through ruptured ventilation shafts. I could smell dried blood beneath the soot.

"Movement?" John asked.

"Nothing on motion trackers," Kelly replied. "Not yet."

That was what worried me.

We hadn't made it more than forty meters when Cortana crackled over squad comms.

"Blue Leader, Blue Two, incoming high-priority transmission. UNSC IFF. Priority Echo-One."

John looked to me. "Let's take it."

Keyes' voice filtered through, gritty with static but ironclad in delivery.

"This is Captain Keyes aboard the Truth and Reconciliation. Situation's changed. Covenant are maneuvering."

We paused in place, crouched behind an overturned bulkhead. Halsey listened in silence, her gaze locked on the comm hologram dancing between John's fingers.

"They've noticed our fleet. Recon drones show multiple capital ships repositioning. We're scrapping the extraction plan. Truth is jumping back to Earth via the Cole Protocol. We're taking the artifact and the AI back with us."

"Understood," John said. "What's the contingency?"

"The Gettysburg. She's making a gravity-assisted slingshot around Reach's orbit. You've got sixteen hours before she passes Castle's location. She'll grab you and Red Team—if you're still topside."

John didn't flinch. "Copy."

"There's more," Keyes continued. "Covenant ground units are converging. Estimates are in the thousands. We've just confirmed a DDS-class carrier descending through upper atmo. It's parking over the mountain. I don't think they know what's down there—but they're gonna find out fast."

My chest clenched. A DDS over our heads meant high-power scanning equipment and eventual mining operations. Deployment spires. Anti-orbital weapons.

"I'm forwarding data on its position," Keyes finished. "Don't waste time. Dig in. Keyes out."

The line went dead.

None of us spoke for a long moment. Only the low rumble of collapsing infrastructure echoed from deeper in the facility.

Cortana's voice cut the tension. "DDS carriers aren't fast, but they're persistent. They'll use low-altitude scans to map every sub-level of this mountain. If we're not off-site or buried, we're found."

John looked to Fred—who had joined us during the call, silently slipping in with the rest of Red Team. The news had hit their comms too.

"We're not leaving anyone behind," John said. "New plan. All Spartans descend. We hold the deepest level."

Fred nodded. "We're already en route. Ammo, heavy weapons, two Titans in mobile sled mode. Kelly and I can take point."

"Negative," John replied. "Leonidas and I will lead. You cover the rear with Joshua and Anton. Kelly and Li run escort with Halsey and Linda."

Fred's visor dipped. "Acknowledged."

We descended.

Castle Base was a labyrinth under the earth. We passed deactivated containment bays, shattered R&D labs, and scorched bunkrooms that hadn't been occupied in years. ONI liked to build their secrets deep, and Castle was no exception.

Halsey's face turned ashen as we passed a shattered door marked "Section Delta." I didn't ask. We kept moving.

Above us, the mountain rumbled again. The Covenant were digging. Scanning. Dropping troops in waves.

But they didn't know we were down here—not yet.

And if we played this right, they never would.

The further we went, the more Castle Base stopped resembling a military installation and more like something out of a ONI fever dream—built not for comfort, not even for humans, but for secrets.

The walls grew darker. Colder. Lights flickered with age and neglect. Power was running off emergency lines, most of which crackled like dying nerves in the rock around us. Motion scanners glitched in and out, and the occasional radiation spike kept pinging the HUD. The deeper we went, the more my gut twisted. ONI had buried something here. Not just data. Not just tech.

Guilt.

"Contact. Infrared. Six heat signatures. Three human," Kelly whispered over comms. We raised weapons instinctively.

"Stand down!" A voice barked from a dark corner.

Spotlights flicked on.

And then we saw them.

Samuel-034 stepped out first, massive even by Spartan standards. Still in full MJOLNIR Mark V, scratched and scorched from more battles than I could count. But it was him. No mistaking it. The man had more scars on his armor than most Spartans had confirmed kills—and that was saying something.

Behind him came Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, looking every bit the part in his faded service uniform, a sidearm holstered, half his jacket scorched through. The ODST, Locklear, had his BR shouldered lazily, but his eyes were scanning us like potential threats. A wiry man in a pilot suit, Warrant Officer Sheila Polaski, stood by a console, flicking through sensor data with quiet focus. Lieutenant Elias Haverson, ONI by the book and bone, stood behind the Admiral, arms crossed, evaluating us like we were chess pieces.

The air was tense for a beat.

Then Sam swiped two fingers across his visor. Spartan smile.

Every Spartan did the same in perfect synchronicity—fourteen helmets, fourteen ghost gestures of a grin.

I stepped forward and clapped Sam on the shoulder. "Heard you were KIA."

Sam's voice was a low rumble. "Yeah, well. That's what the Covies wanted. Not gonna give them anything."

John took a step forward, nodding. "We thought we lost you."

"Not for lack of trying." Sam's eyes tracked to Linda's cryotube. "She okay?"

"She'll make it," John said.

Then Whitcomb stepped into the light. He didn't speak at first—just looked us over. He stopped on John's armor, the subtle wear of command in every polished line. Then me. Then Kelly, Fred, Li, and the rest. Spartans. All of us.

"I was expecting ghosts," he finally said. "Didn't think Command had enough spine to send real steel down here."

"We don't take orders from Command," John replied flatly. "We take orders from the mission."

That made Whitcomb smirk. "Then I assume Operation: RED FLAG is going ahead?"

John shook his head. "Negative. Plans changed. Reach fell. We fought through a Forerunner ring installation. Recovered a key artifact. Destroyed the Halo before the Covenant could use it. The fleet is en route back to Earth, and we were rerouted here on intercept of your distress signal."

Polaski's brow furrowed. "Wait. You destroyed a Halo? What's that?"

"The ring was a superweapon," Halsey cut in. She had remained silent until now, observing. "Designed to kill all sentient life in the galaxy to deny food to a parasite. The Covenant revere it as divine. They would've triggered it without hesitation."

Sam let out a low whistle.

Whitcomb looked like someone had just punched him in the throat.

"But that's not why we're down here," John added. "We're here because we don't leave Spartans behind."

Whitcomb nodded, processing that. "Well… you found us."

Before anyone could speak again, the mountain shuddered.

And then we heard it.

A deep, mechanical grind—like a hungry god chewing stone.

It echoed through the corridor walls and vibrated in the soles of our boots.

Kelly snapped her head up. "That's not a tremor."

Li confirmed it a second later. "Seismic sensors pinged. Covenant are drilling into the mountain. Multiple contact points."

Fred brought his HUD up. "They're looking for something."

"They found us," I muttered.

Sam pulled his rifle off his back and racked it once. "About time. I'm tired of hiding."

Whitcomb turned on his heel and barked, "Polaski, Locklear, seal that entrance with every charge we've got. Delay them."

Then he looked back at John.

"You Spartans want a mission? Here it is. You hold this mountain or we die with the data. Castle Base doesn't fall."

John looked at me. I didn't need orders. We both knew what came next.

This wasn't a rescue anymore.

It was a stand.

Halsey didn't waste time. She never did. The moment we'd cleared the chamber and secured the perimeter, she directed two ODST medics down here to bring Linda's cryo pod to a mobile surgical bay deeper inside the level. Lights flickered overhead as backup generators struggled to keep power stable. My HUD synced with the base's VI system and gave me a 67% integrity readout on power flow—meaning we were one plasma bolt from blacking out the whole level.

But she worked in silence, her hands swift, methodical. Cortana synced her medical subroutines through John's MJOLNIR interface to support the surgical programming. Linda's vitals stabilized, the cryo gel reabsorbing in measured pulses. The organ regrowth vat bubbled behind Halsey, flash-cloning fresh replacements—lungs, liver, kidney, all marked with Linda's DNA profile.

I glanced over at John. He was kneeling beside Sam, both watching the cloning process with the same unreadable calm. Kelly stood at the entrance with Fred, keeping watch. Li, Joshua, James, and the rest of Blue Team were checking and rechecking weapons, magazines, gear, and jump kits. We weren't hoping for a fight.

We were planning one.

Then Halsey dropped the bomb.

"There's a fallback path."

The room turned. Haverson, leaning against a wall and patching a signal booster, groaned audibly.

"Oh, please tell me we're not about to go spelunking."

Halsey ignored him, already pulling up the base's topography on the cracked holotable. The hologram flickered twice before stabilizing.

"Castle Base was constructed on top of decommissioned titanium mines," she explained, tracing one long, gloved finger down the projection. "Three main shafts run beneath this mountain. ONI kept them out of public records to avoid drawing interest. We sealed the tunnels off decades ago when the site was repurposed. They drop another kilometer—straight down."

"And they're intact?" I asked.

"Intact enough to fall back through if the Covenant breach this level," she replied. "No guarantees."

Sam grunted. "So we fall until we can't."

Halsey nodded grimly. "Exactly."

Before anyone could respond, the mountain screamed.

A low, agonized roar echoed through the base, followed by the thunderclap of pressure giving way. The floor vibrated beneath our boots. Dust rained from the ceiling as everyone snapped into formation.

"Drill breach!" Fred called out, his voice cutting through the air.

HUD markers went live. Red. Dozens. All clustered near the southwest corridor. The plasma drill must've breached the wall there, burning straight through layers of titanium, stone, and synthetic armor plating.

"Contact!" Kelly called.

The corridor exploded in a wash of heat and flame.

A wall gave way, molten slag oozing outward—and behind it, a Covenant breaching squad. Elite Rangers and Jackals first, pushing through the half-melted corridor, their shields flaring as they entered the fray. Blue Team snapped into formation instantly, rifles and DMRs crackling with disciplined fire.

Sam was the first to engage, his jump kit hurling him into the lead Ranger before the bastard could level his carbine. Sam hit like a freight train, driving his fist through the Elite's chest shield and twisting it to shatter the bone underneath.

Fred and Kelly were next, suppressing the corridor with staggered bursts, targeting weak points in the Jackals' formation. Li and Josh dropped prone and let loose with heavy suppressive fire from the sides.

I activated my own jump kit and vaulted onto the broken scaffolding to get a higher firing angle. I switched to burst fire, my MA5B spitting tungsten rounds into an Elite's faceplate until the helmet cracked and the plasma inside shorted out his brain. The stench of burnt methane and blood filled the air.

John moved like a ghost—silent, precise, deadly. He backhanded a Jackal with enough force to dent its skull before driving a plasma pistol into another's throat and discharging point-blank. Cortana flared across his HUD, marking breach points and enemy formations with pinpoint precision.

"They're through!" Joshua shouted. "More incoming!"

And then came the Wraith fire.

A blast shook the chamber, disintegrating a section of the opposite wall. The Covenant had started deploying vehicles. The mountain was becoming a tomb.

"Fall back to secondary defensive line!" John barked.

The Spartans didn't question.

We retreated methodically, leapfrogging through cover and suppressive fire. The ODSTs and ONI survivors scrambled to reposition the wounded and secure Linda's cryo pod as we bought time. Sam covered our flank, his armor scorched and dented, his weapon overheating.

The Covenant were pushing harder than anticipated. They weren't just trying to crack the base—they were trying to bury us alive.

And they were close to doing it.

The mountain roared again as the charges behind us went off, sealing the path with a thunderous collapse. Dust filled the air, thick and choking. Chunks of rock and synthetic plating tumbled from the ceiling, the sound of finality echoing in the narrow shaft.

We were officially buried.

The heat from the blast pressed against the backs of our necks even through the armor seals. Oxygen levels dipped for a moment, then stabilized as the suits' rebreathers kicked in.

I glanced back, checking the line.

Linda was in the center, being carried on a makeshift stretcher reinforced with alloy plating from one of the broken wall panels. Sturdy enough to hold her in her MJOLNIR. Her vitals were stable—barely. Halsey had done a miracle job, even with limited tools and under fire. Her organs were fresh, cloned and grafted with shocking speed, but it'd be hours before she regained consciousness.

Sam was carrying the rear, shotgun at the ready. Fred and Kelly moved point, with John at the center flank, covering the survivors—Whitcomb, Locklear, Polaski, and Haverson. All of them had firearms now. They didn't look like civilians anymore.

The old titanium mines were narrow, jagged, the walls scarred with decades of tool marks and corrosion. In some places, moisture dripped from the ceiling. In others, the ground crumbled underfoot.

No lights down here—just darkness so thick it pressed against your visor.

Our helmet beams cut through the black in cones, bouncing off dust and revealing ancient mining tracks beneath our feet. Most of the support beams were still intact, but even steel bends under centuries of neglect and Covenant bombardment.

We moved in silence, our boots echoing like distant drums.

Covenant weren't far behind, and we knew it.

Ten minutes in, we hit a narrowing. The tunnel dipped and curved in a sharp L-shape, and we had to duck beneath rusted scaffolding and step around a collapsed mining cart. That's when I saw it.

"Hold," I said, raising a closed fist.

The team stopped.

My light was bouncing off something. Something smooth.

Titanium's rough. Even polished, it doesn't reflect like this.

I stepped closer and cleared the dust off the surface with a sweep of my gauntlet.

There it was.

A wall of metal—pale silver but with a faint shimmer beneath the grime. Intricate lines pulsed across its surface. Not just carvings—light. Blue, electric, dancing slowly beneath translucent layers.

This wasn't human.

"John," I called.

He stepped forward, joined me, and crouched to get a better look.

"Forerunner?" he asked.

"Looks like the buildings from the ring and zone 67," I replied. "Same pattern language. Weird all these ruins keep appearing as of late."

"No console," Fred said, scanning the edges.

No interface. No holographic glyph. Just a sealed panel, tall and wide enough to fit a Mantis through, completely flush with the surrounding rock.

"Could be a vault," Haverson offered. "Or a bunker."

"No telling what's behind it," Halsey murmured, her voice filtered through her helmet. "But I can promise you, ONI didn't put it here."

"What do we do?" Kelly asked.

John looked to me. I nodded.

"Set the charges."

It took us two minutes. Fred and I placed directional breaching charges at the vertical seams. Sam and Josh set backups at the base corners in case we had to blow it completely.

The others fell back into a side alcove, covering Linda and the civilians. Halsey knelt beside her cryo pod, shielded by a jut of jagged stone.

I made one last check, then keyed the remote detonator and synced it to the HUD.

John gave the signal.

"Clear back. Blast in five."

The charges blinked to life, tiny red lights counting down in our visors.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

The corridor lit up with the glow of fire.

And the Forerunner door… began to open.

The Forerunner door didn't blast apart.

It opened—seamlessly—sliding into the walls like the metal had never been solid to begin with. There was no sound. No vibration. Just a sudden absence of a wall that had been there for who knows how long.

We stepped into a chamber that made my helmet's depth sensors glitch.

It was massive.

A circular room, no… not just a room—a shaft. Nearly three kilometers across, with walls that rose so high I couldn't see the ceiling even with enhanced optics and our flashlight cones overlapping. The walls curled upward in a spiral, like a threaded screw of black and silver alloys interlaced with glowing blue circuit tracers that throbbed like veins.

We were standing on a narrow bridge that led to a platform at the exact center of the shaft. The floor was stone, metal, and something else—something that absorbed light but still shimmered with reflected motion. It looked ancient but alive, like it could reshape itself in an instant.

At the center of the room, on a raised golden pedestal, hovered a crystal.

It was shaped like a long prism, tapered at both ends. Its surface was covered in interlocking pieces, puzzle-like joints that shifted minutely, never aligning—never still. Pale golden light pulsed inside the structure, like it was breathing. As we got closer, it rose slightly in the air, turning to face us.

The Forerunner artifact.

Everyone spread out in a tactical arc around it, weapons lowered but ready. Even Whitcomb was stunned into silence. Linda was still unconscious, her cryo pod in the rear behind Halsey and Haverson.

"Movement?" I asked, eyes scanning.

"Nothing on motion," Fred said, voice tight.

"Not Covenant?" Josh asked.

"No trace," John said, stepping closer. "Whatever this is… this is what they were drilling for."

Then the light changed.

A beam—pure white, brighter than anything I'd ever seen—blasted through the ceiling directly above the artifact. It didn't fade in. It detonated into existence.

A solid column of burning light, like a god had drawn a sword and pointed it down at us.

Every Spartan dove for cover. Polaski screamed. Halsey flinched and shielded her eyes. I yanked my rifle up, already moving behind a support strut jutting from the floor like the spine of the room had snapped upward.

But the beam didn't vaporize anything. It didn't scorch the ground. It didn't hit us.

It hit the artifact.

And then the ceiling opened—literally opened.

Panels we hadn't even seen began peeling back, plates the size of city blocks shifting with a rumble that shook the air like thunder. The beam expanded—widening to almost a hundred meters in diameter—until a full pillar of sunlight cascaded down from a hole that led all the way to the surface.

The dust in the air turned golden.

Our helmets dimmed automatically to compensate for the shift in exposure.

The crystal floated higher, now glowing intensely—humming with power. Halsey stepped forward instinctively, hand outstretched.

"Don't," John snapped. His voice didn't waver, not even a fraction. "That's not natural light."

Fred's eyes locked on the shaft.

"That's not just a hole," he said slowly. "That was an energy projector pulse. A pinpoint one."

My HUD blinked. I looked up.

He was right. The sunlight was coming in through a clean, cylindrical channel that hadn't existed before. The shaft went all the way up. The roof had been solid, a Forerunner shielded layer. Now it was peeled open like a flower.

And something about it—it wasn't random.

"It's a targeting tunnel," I said. "The Covenant drilled down with a pulse laser."

Josh swore under his breath. "Then this room…"

"They were after this," I said. "This exact artifact. We just happened to be here."

"They knew," Fred said. "They were never after Castle Base, they may have only found reach for this. They wanted this."

The crystal rotated slowly mid-air, now blazing like a small sun. And I knew, in my gut, that whatever it was… it had just been activated.

This wasn't over.

It was just beginning.

The light died.

The shaft, illuminated by that godlike beam of sunlight, didn't return to darkness—but the contrast hit like a hammer to the retinas. Blue tracers along the wall intensified in glow, pulsing in time with the now slowly descending artifact. The golden crystal was coming back down to its pedestal.

That's when we heard them.

Engines.

Dozens of them. Then dozens more.

The whine of Covenant dropships echoed down the massive shaft. They didn't try to hide. They weren't stealthy. It was like they wanted us to know they were here.

They came through the tunnel above—one by one at first, then in threes and fours—Type-52 Phantom dropships, accompanied by a handful of the old Type-28 Spirits for heavy lift support. They coasted inward, slow, deliberate, like carrion birds descending toward a corpse.

They didn't fire.

No doors opened mid-flight. No plasma beams roared to life. They drifted to the massive concentric ring platforms that lined the interior of the shaft like ancient terraces—landing on them like they were arriving at a temple.

They began unloading troops.

Grunts. Jackals. Elites. Dozens—hundreds. Each ship dropped its entire complement, then slowly pulled back into the tunnel above to make room for the next wave.

I counted thirty-seven dropships before I stopped.

Fred was next to me, rifle raised but unmoving.

"They're not engaging," he muttered.

"No brutes," I said, noting the absence like a sickness that hadn't yet manifested.

Covenant troops filled the upper levels of the shaft, spread out across the rings above us like encircling wolves. They stood in combat-ready formations, but none of them aimed at us. They weren't speaking. Not even the grunts were chattering.

"They're here for the artifact," Halsey said from behind me. "Not us."

John didn't respond. He was watching the artifact descend back onto the golden pedestal, one hand on the hilt of his magnum like a gunfighter waiting for a draw.

"I don't like this," Josh muttered.

The rest of the Spartans were spread in a 360-degree perimeter around the platform, shielding the civilians and Linda's cryo tube. The survivors from Castle Base—Haverson, Polaski, Locklear—they didn't speak. They just stared up in awe. And maybe terror.

"Standby," I said, my voice low but cutting across the squad net. "We don't make the first move."

And we didn't need to. Because they did.

A pair of hunters—massive, blue-armored tanks of muscle and bonded worms—marched to the edge of one of the upper rings. They moved in tandem, their giant shields held low. But something about their stride… it wasn't in sync with the rest.

And then it happened.

They raised their plasma cannons—and fired.

Two green bolts of plasma screamed down toward us, slamming into the edge of the platform near Halsey and Whitcomb. The blast threw sparks and rubble, sending Haverson sprawling and nearly tossing Locklear off the ledge.

Fred shoved Halsey behind cover. John dropped to a crouch beside the pedestal, rifle up, Cortana barking data into his HUD.

I raised my rifle, targeting the hunters—already preparing to unleash hell—

But then the impossible happened.

The rest of the Covenant opened fire.

Not at us.

At the hunters.

Blue plasma, green bolts, needle rounds—all of it rained down on the two hunter forms from every angle. A full company of elites and jackals began emptying their weapons into the pair. It wasn't warning fire. It was an execution.

The hunter pair tried to shield themselves. One stepped in front of the other. Then the second lunged in rage, returning fire upward at a phantom still hovering—but it was too late.

They were vaporized in less than ten seconds. When the last bolt hit, there was nothing left. Just burning metal and a splash of molten worms across the platform.

Silence returned. The Covenant held position.

We didn't move. None of us even breathed.

"What the hell was that?" Josh whispered.

Fred shook his head, as if denying what we'd all seen.

"They turned on their own," John said flatly.

"No," Halsey whispered, rising slowly from cover, eyes locked on the artifact. "Not on their own. That… that was judgment."

I looked back at the crystal.

It now pulsed with blue light. No longer gold. The light traced veins through the pedestal and into the floor beneath, into the very walls of the shaft.

"I think we're inside something bigger than we can understand," I said.

John looked up at the ringed terraces of alien soldiers standing still like statues.

"They're waiting," he said. "But for what?"

There was no answer.

But I could feel it. Like an itch in the back of my skull. Like a pressure drop before a storm.

Something was about to happen.

Something none of us could predict.

The light returned.

A deep hum vibrated through the Forerunner walls, a sound not heard with ears but with bone. Even the artifact pulsed in time with it—now glowing a cool, serene blue.

Then came the light.

From above, a shaft of pale energy speared down the center of the massive chamber. At first it looked like another sunbeam—but it wasn't light from the heavens. It was artificial. It was deliberate. It was a Covenant grav lift.

A full carrier-class grav beam.

The blue-white column shimmered like boiling water. Particles floated upward inside it, disturbed dust and shattered fragments of air. Its intensity dwarfed any phantom or drop ship beam we'd seen in combat—it was meant to haul something enormous.

Or sacred.

And it came right for the artifact.

The crystal responded to the lift's presence with a low tone, almost melodic. It rose—hovered—then slowly began to drift toward the grav beam's center.

I didn't think.

I lunged forward and caught it mid-air.

Immediately, the room changed.

The humming deepened, now laced with a grinding resonance like tectonic plates shifting. The moment my gauntlet touched the artifact, I felt a pulse run up my arm like a second heartbeat.

Above us, the concentric rings of Covenant infantry roared in unison. But they didn't attack.

They didn't even raise their weapons.

Just cries of protest—wails in their twisted, alien tongues. Some barked commands. Others hissed threats. But no one fired.

Not one plasma bolt.

"Leonidas—" John's voice crackled in my ear. "—what the hell did you just do?"

"Leverage," I replied.

Because I knew.

I could see it on their faces. Even the Elites—they were trembling. Not with fear of us. But fear of what might happen if the artifact were damaged.

The grav beam intensified.

The floor beneath my boots began to sink. No, not the platform—me, I was rising. The artifact was the target, and I was just along for the ride. A second later, Halsey, Polaski, Locklear, and Haverson began to rise, the others caught in the widening field. One by one, Spartans joined us—then the rest of the survivors.

We floated up.

Through the center of the cyclopean shaft.

Dozens of Covenant soldiers watched in eerie silence as we ascended, floating past their tiered positions. I stared down a crimson-armored Elite Major as we passed his level—his mandibles were clenched tight, but his hands never reached for his weapon.

Even John—unshakable John—was scanning the platforms like a turret waiting to lock on.

But no shots came.

"Leonidas…" Halsey whispered from beside me, gripping the edges of her gear pack as she hovered just above the artifact. "Do you know what you've done?"

"I know they won't shoot me while I'm holding this."

The grav beam tightened, pulling us faster now.

The shaft narrowed near the top, funnelling the entire field of energy into a focused point. The air grew hot. The light stung even through polarized visors. And yet, the artifact didn't flinch—it pulsed in my hands with purpose.

Above us, the Covenant carrier waited.

A DDS-class assault ship, the kind we'd only taken down through sheer desperation or brutal tactics. Its underbelly was exposed through the broken mountain top, hovering directly over the ancient structure.

And we were headed right into its belly.

The beam pierced into a receiving chamber just behind the primary energy projector. The carrier's drop bay was already cleared, cleared for us. Our arrival wasn't a surprise.

It was expected.

"They want the artifact," Fred said quietly over comms.

"They want it bad enough to bring us inside," Kelly added.

"No resistance," John said.

"Not yet," I corrected.

I looked down once—at the glowing, ancient structure below. Covenant troops still lined the terraces like guards at a funeral. They hadn't fired a single shot.

They let us go.

We passed into the carrier—like a sword hidden in a gift box.

I grinned behind my visor.

If the Covenant thought they'd retrieved their precious relic unscathed, they were in for one hell of a surprise.

Because we were the payload now.

Not the artifact.

And we were already inside their fortress.

The grav lift slowed. The artificial field shuddered as we neared the top of the shaft. For a split second, I could see past the light distortion and into the Covenant drop bay ahead—massive, domed, drenched in purple hues, and lined with energy shielding along every exit corridor.

There were at least thirty troops immediately visible.

And more waiting.

The artifact pulsed again in my hands.

"Listen up, Spartans," I said over the squad-wide channel, voice steel-flat. "The second this lift lets go, we're weapons hot."

They didn't need the order.

They were already shifting their stance in the zero-G flow of the grav field, prepping rifles, checking battery counts, sealing visors tight.

"I'll take center. Fred and Will—left flank. John, take point with Cortana. We're cracking this ship open from the hangar out."

"Acknowledged," Fred said, low and ready.

"We're gonna steal another damn capital ship?" Locklear asked over the open comm, dumbfounded.

"You're standing in it," I snapped.

"We've done it before," John added calmly.

"No mistakes this time. We move fast, hit hard, and we finish what Reach started."

The grav beam reached its apex.

I bent my knees slightly and adjusted my grip on the artifact. "Kelly, Josh, Vinh—you sweep the upper gantries, keep overwatch. Sam and Malcolm, cover Halsey and the civilians. Halsey, once we have the bay clear, you're putting Cortana into a terminal."

"She's ready," John said.

"Good. Then we're skipping straight to phase two." I paused. "Cortana?"

"Yes, Leonidas?"

"Once you have access, I want you to do the following. Priority one—get us out of the atmosphere. Minimum safe distance, maximum burn."

"Done."

"Priority two—disable gravity in all compartments except this hangar. Lock every pressure door from here to the bridge, then vent the bastards. If it doesn't wear a UNSC tag, it flies out into space."

"That will kill anything that isn't sealed."

"That's the point."

"And if some are sealed?" Cortana asked.

"Then we sweep the decks and end them the old-fashioned way."

A brief pause. Then: "I like this plan."

"Good. After we confirm a hard vacuum and clear status, we'll rendezvous with the Gettysburg. She'll be slingshotting around Reach's gravity well."

"What about the artifact?" Halsey asked, her voice tight. "We can't risk damage."

"We won't," I assured her. "But I'm not handing it over to another Covenant prophet either."

John added: "If they wanted it that bad, it must be important. It's leverage. Or bait."

"Either way," I said, "it's ours now."

We were seconds away. The drop bay's gravity would catch us like a net.

No more floating.

No more waiting.

I did a final scan of the Spartans surrounding me.

Fifteen of us, including Sam, Fred, Kelly, Josh, Will, John, and a half dozen others from Blue and Red teams. We had experience, armor, and surprise. They had the numbers and a ship.

But they weren't ready for this fight.

Not here.

Not inside their own walls.

"We hold the hangar," I growled. "We breach the core. We own this ship."

Then the grav lift ended.

Time to go loud.

The grav lift's shimmering veil disappeared like fog peeled by wind, and we landed hard on polished violet alloy—the drop bay floor of the Covenant assault carrier.

The air was thick with tension. Covenant troops surrounded us in a crescent arc. Dozens of Elites, Jackals, and Grunts stood posted along gantries, catwalks, and open mag-rail freight lanes—but none fired.

Their weapons were raised, locked on, fingers twitching. But every single eye—four, two, or more—was locked on the floating artifact glowing softly in my armored hands.

Covenant murmurs echoed across the hangar like whispered prayers. Some bowed. Others stepped back. The artifact was sacred, and now it was between us.

They wouldn't risk it.

But that wouldn't last long.

I stepped backward—slow, measured—toward the survivors. Halsey. Haverson. Locklear. Polaski. Linda's cryo-tube. Sam beside me, his towering form as calm and unreadable as ever.

The Spartans around me fell into formation. John took the point. Fred and Will broke off toward the closest cover on the flanks. Kelly and Josh went high, scaling a catwalk in seconds with practiced use of jumpjets and grapples.

The artifact pulsed again. Faint, rhythmic. Almost… curious.

Then came the crack.

A plasma bolt snapped past my left shoulder and hit the floor behind us.

"Go," I snapped.

In that second, chaos erupted.

The Spartans moved as one, weapons rising like synchronized clockwork. John's rifle barked first, and a Jackal's shield exploded as it was hurled across the deck. Fred followed with precision, a pair of Grunts dropping before they could even scream.

I stayed back—still near the artifact, still a damn human shield for the personnel behind me. I could feel the crosshairs of every surviving alien in the bay—every trigger-happy zealot restrained only by reverence.

"Cortana," I said through grit teeth, "start your climb. Now."

"I'm in," she answered instantly. "Making the climb to orbit… and unlocking ship control now. You'll have artificial gravity for the hangar only. All other sections will be vented in t-minus ninety seconds."

"Copy."

I turned just enough to glance behind me. Halsey had taken cover behind a load rack, guarding Linda's cryo pod with her sidearm drawn and ready. Locklear knelt near a mag rail with an M7, and Haverson stood ready to toss a flashbang the second anyone got close.

The crystal gave off a low hum—like it knew what was coming.

A pack of Elites surged from the far bay door, their armor gleaming cobalt and silver.

"Sam! Your right!" I yelled.

He turned and fired his M90 shotgun at center mass. The first Elite's shields flared, then popped, and his chest erupted in a splash of purple mist. Sam stepped forward and pumped again, clearing a path through the group with mechanical efficiency.

Plasma grenades buzzed overhead, but Kelly—ever the sprinter—zipped across the catwalk and knocked them aside with quick reflexes and a few bursts of her jumpjets.

Then it happened.

The hangar lurched.

Gravity shifted.

The alien hull let out a low, deep groan, like a beast waking up.

"Vent cycle in progress," Cortana announced coolly. "Stand by."

A deep rumble shuddered through the ship. Even from here, we could hear bulkheads slamming shut. Seals hissed. Magnetic clamps triggered. The lights in the hangar flickered—but held.

And then…

The rest of the ship went dark.

Outside the hangar, pressure purged.

We could see it in the eyes of the Grunts. Panic. The ones not immediately sucked out into space began choking in their own methane, lungs spasming inside their enviro-suits. Jackals banged on sealed doors trying to escape—too late. Elites flailed, some drifting upward as artificial gravity failed in their compartments.

Hundreds of Covenant lives… gone in moments.

Cortana's voice returned, crisp and smug: "Venting complete. Hangar remains sealed. Sweep the ship at your leisure."

"Copy," John said over squad net. "Blue and Red team—begin sweep and clear. If it breathes and still stands, make sure it doesn't."

Fred and Will stacked up near the next bulkhead, now unlocked, and entered cautiously. Gunfire resumed almost immediately.

"Leonidas," John said, stepping up beside me, "status of the artifact?"

I glanced down at the crystal. Still floating. Still humming. Still warm. "Stable," I said. "It didn't react to the vent cycle."

"Good. We're not losing another ship. Get your team moving."

"Already on it."

The survivors huddled near the makeshift perimeter, wide-eyed but alive. "Polaski, Haverson—grab the sidearms from the fallen. Halsey, stick close to Locklear and Sam. We move once the sweep team confirms control."

The ship shook again—mild this time. A few final decompression waves cycling through non-critical decks.

We had it.

Another Covenant DDS-class carrier, this time fully functional and not swarming with aliens.

"Cortana, confirm—are we free and clear of atmosphere?"

"Affirmative. Altitude is 230,000 feet and climbing. We've broken atmo and are now on escape vector."

"Bring us into the Gettysburg's orbital path. We're coming home."

The bridge was packed.

Covenant command chairs had been pulled aside. Blue-glow consoles flickered under Cortana's control as she inhabited the ship like a ghost in its holy machine. The entire Spartan operation team was present, armor scuffed and blood-streaked. Halsey and the remaining civilians stood behind them near the holotank, eyes darting nervously at the unfamiliar glyphs and symbols crawling over every surface of the ship.

And then came her voice—confident, clear, sharp as ever.

"Leonidas, we have a problem."

I already knew before she said it. The hum in the deckplates, the change in tone—everything felt tighter. More urgent.

Cortana flickered to life in the central holopad, arms crossed.

"Five Covenant cruisers approaching. Range: 30,000 kilometers. All five are preparing plasma torpedo volleys."

A sharp breath hissed in through someone's teeth—probably Haverson.

I looked at John, standing calm beside me. "We hold or we run?"

"We run," he said without hesitation.

I turned back to the AI in the ceiling. "Cortana. Let loose. Burn them if you have to—but get us to the Gettysburg."

"Understood."

And then all hell broke loose.

The Ascendant Justice bucked as Cortana brought her weapons online. The energy projectors—two of them—charged from deep within the ship's forward core. The glyphs on the walls brightened, and a visible electrical pulse ran through the vessel like a ripple.

Two plasma torpedoes from the Covenant cruisers arced our way. Cortana adjusted the ventral fins with violent precision. The Ascendant Justice turned as elegantly as a ballerina in hard vacuum, angling the nose just enough.

And then—

ZHRRRMMMM

Two beams of blazing, white-hot death erupted from the prow of the ship. The closest cruiser—an ORS-class heavy—split in half, its hull folding like paper. The second beam skewered the ship behind it, carving it in half like a Thanksgiving turkey. Debris tumbled outward, caught in the fire of their own imploding plasma cells.

A third torpedo struck us, but it barely glanced the starboard hull—Cortana had already fired maneuvering thrusters to deflect.

The bridge lights dimmed slightly.

"Two down. One critically damaged. Returning fire."

I stepped forward, grabbing the command railing as another beam fired.

The third Covenant ship—less fortunate than the rest—caught the full brunt along its dorsal side. It exploded spectacularly, the implosion lighting up the void with a burst of purple and fire.

We all braced as the Gettysburg appeared in the distance, still holding station after its slingshot maneuver around Reach. The two remaining Covenant cruisers began to break formation, scrambling to flank.

"Cortana, now's the time!"

"Acknowledged. Firing thrusters. Get the Gettysburg ready to link."

On the other ship's hull, I watched the latching clamps deploy—old UNSC code retrofitted into the AI's control scheme. The Gettysburg's forward loading arms swung into position and locked onto our aft boarding corridor.

Cortana's voice snapped like a command whip.

"Connection confirmed. Launching Slipspace now."

The space around us bent.

A glimmer of purple and black bled across the viewports. Space folded in on itself, twisting in ways our minds weren't meant to track. For a split second, the stars disappeared, replaced by a swirling vortex of black veins and deep lavender ripples.

"Slipspace initiated."

We were in.

Everyone on the bridge finally breathed.

Except the artifact.

It pulsed. Once. Then twice.

The room around us changed.

The holotanks distorted. Cortana's avatar flickered. She looked… off. Not panicked. Just momentarily unsure.

"Leonidas," she said, voice quieter, "something's… wrong."

I looked at the artifact floating in its containment field. Its light wasn't pulsing blue anymore—it was gold, and steady. There was a hum in the back of my skull. A familiar tone I couldn't explain. Like the notes of a song I hadn't heard since I was a child.

Then the walls shifted.

The internal gravity twisted slightly, realigning—but not the way a slipspace jump normally feels. It was more like the ship was being moved, not by its own engines, but by something external.

Like a fish pulled upstream by a current it couldn't resist.

"This isn't normal slipspace," Cortana said. "The artifact is… altering the Slipstream field."

I looked at Halsey. She was staring at the crystal, her face lit by its golden glow.

She whispered something I couldn't hear.

The bridge was silent. Every Spartan was watching, waiting.

"Then where the hell are we going?" I asked, more to myself than anyone else.

"We need a plan soon, the covenant are riding our slipspace wake," Cortana said finally.

The void outside the viewport looked wrong. Not the usual matte blackness of slipspace, not even the lilac-streaked insanity of Covenant tunneling. This was… fractured. Torn. Like reality had been thrown into a blender and set to purée.

The two Covenant cruisers chasing us blinked in and out of visual range. One moment they were trailing close behind, plasma torpedoes seething in their launchers. The next—they jolted forward several kilometers, their hulls shuddering like they were made of gelatin, then blinked completely out of sight, only to appear seconds later on our starboard.

Like they were teleporting, or more precisely—glitching through existence.

"Cortana, status," I said, gripping a side rail as the ship's interior rattled again.

"The artifact is manipulating the Slipstream field… It's not following the usual geometry. It's curving space-time, warping it. But the result is cracks and fractures as you can see." Her tone was clipped, clinical—but under it, a layer of awe bled through.

Halsey, leaning against the command dais, adjusted her glasses. "No… Not just space," she murmured. "It's manipulating time."

I turned sharply.

"It's affecting our pursuers' perception of distance," she continued. "They fire plasma, but the bolts vanish or shift—time stutters mid-flight, space folds unpredictably. The artifact… it's doing this. Like it's reacting to protect itself."

John stood nearby, silent, one armored fist curled over his battle rifle. He was always like this—letting others talk while his mind calculated every variable. I knew he was already preparing for the worst. We all were.

"I've been scanning the ship's native logs," Cortana interjected suddenly. "Found something buried in the Covenant command matrix. Interesting orders—encrypted, but not very well. This carrier was to recover the artifact and then rendezvous with a Covenant detachment in the Tau Ceti system."

Heads snapped toward her.

"Tau Ceti?" Fred echoed. "That system fell almost a year ago."

"And it wasn't just glassed," I added. "They eradicated everything. No survivors. No structures left standing. Not even an orbital comm relay."

Cortana nodded from her holo-pedestal. "The Covenant didn't just purge Tau Ceti. They searched it. This artifact was meant to be delivered there. That tells us it wasn't just destruction. They were looking for something. Just like Reach."

The bridge fell into silence, broken only by the occasional pulse of the crystal floating inside its containment prism. It hummed now, like a low note strung across the bones in my body.

Then Whitcomb stepped forward.

We all turned toward him. Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, UNSC Navy. Still in his dusty, sweat-stained uniform, but standing with the weight of authority we'd all been drilled to recognize.

He cleared his throat. "Spartans. AI. Dr. Halsey."

He looked to each of us in turn, ending on John and me.

"You've done well," he said, "and I mean that in the highest capacity. You pulled this operation out of the ashes of Reach and brought us back a Covenant capital ship."

He gave a small nod toward the forward viewport, where the Gettysburg was still latched to us, riding like a remora on a shark.

"But I am now the senior military officer aboard this vessel," he continued, voice gaining steel. "And as such, I am assuming command of this task force."

No one objected. Not even John. Rank was rank, and the Admiral hadn't lost his edge.

"I've reviewed our position," Whitcomb said, tapping the console to bring up a tactical display. "With two cruisers still on our tail, we're at risk if we drop into standard space too close to a UNSC stronghold. We need to lead them away first."

"Where?" I asked.

Whitcomb gave a slow smile. "To Tau Ceti."

A beat.

"You want to deliver the artifact," Halsey said, eyes narrowing, "to the very place the Covenant were going to regroup?"

"No," he said. "I want to deliver a message. A first strike."

He turned back to the map. "We're sitting on the most advanced Covenant ship ever commandeered by humanity. We have a full Spartan detachment, A smart AI, as many TAI as we have spartans, one of the best command and control crews left in the Navy, and one hell of a firepower advantage. That's enough to get in, hit them hard, and vanish."

John finally spoke. "Operation: Red Flag was to steal a Covenant ship and find their homeworld. You're proposing something else."

"I am. Red Flag is still viable," Whitcomb said. "But if the Covenant are in Tau Ceti, if they're gathering there, we can cripple their forces before we resume Red Flag. Buy the UNSC breathing room. Make them pay for Reach. For Harvest. For every planet they've taken."

He looked at each of us. "Operation: First Strike."

Fred nodded slowly. "We've got the platform."

Halsey seemed torn. "A risky maneuver, Admiral."

"All operations are," he said coolly. "Especially when humanity's survival is on the line."

He looked at Cortana. "Course to Tau Ceti. Execute."

"Aye, Admiral."

The ship shuddered again, slipspace geometry shifting. I braced against the pull. We exited slipspace and just as quickly enter with a new trajectory the moment Cortana knows where we are.

Then Whitcomb turned to me.

"Commander Leonidas. Get your Spartans prepped. I want a full loadout, all fireteams briefed, and recon strategies in place for insertion. If the artifact's leading us into the Covenant's hunting grounds, then I want boots on the ground before they realize it."

I nodded. "Yes, sir."

He stepped back. "Let's show them what it means to pick a fight with humanity."

As the bridge lights dimmed and the slipspace distortion began to stabilize, I checked my HUD. Power readings were holding. Shields charged. The Spartans were already moving—quiet chatter on secure comms as they armed up and began prepping drop routes.

And there it was again.

That hum in my bones from the artifact. The low frequency that made my skin itch beneath the Mjolnir.

We were diving headfirst into the jaws of the enemy.

And I couldn't wait.

The star flared before us like a god's furnace, spewing waves of solar radiation across the void. We hadn't dropped from slipspace into safety—we'd emerged at the edge of annihilation. It was like opening your eyes and finding yourself standing three feet from the surface of the sun.

But that was exactly where Cortana had brought us.

"We're in position," Cortana's voice echoed over the bridge comms. "The star's corona is interfering with most forms of long-range detection. I'm using it to mask our emissions. We should be functionally invisible to Covenant sensors for the moment."

Should.

That word always hung heavier than it should.

Across from me, Admiral Whitcomb crossed his arms. His face was calm, cold, calculating. He was in his element now—danger close, options limited, and the stakes higher than a nuke on a hair trigger.

"Now let's lose our guests," he muttered.

Cortana nodded—or simulated the gesture with a flicker of her holographic form. "Initiating emergency decoupling protocols. Prepare for maneuvering."

The Gettysburg, still magnetically clamped to our underbelly like a steel barnacle, groaned as airlock bridges retracted and clamps disengaged. I felt the subtle shift in gravity and balance as the twin ships separated, one bracing to enter stealth formation, the other to swing wide and circle the star.

"Lieutenant Commander Rawley," Whitcomb addressed the Gettysburg's captain via encrypted channel, "you are now a free operator. Maintain silent running and prepare to act as a ghost fleet. You'll be our fallback if we go dark."

"Aye, sir. We'll stay hidden in the stellar wake. Call us if it hits the fan."

As the Gettysburg detached, it burned a tight spiral path away from the Ascendant Justice, disappearing into the turbulent emissions flaring off the star. I could barely make out its form in the corona's golden chaos. Good. The Covies wouldn't see it either.

Then the crystal pulsed.

It was subtle—an ambient hum across the bridge's metallic bones. My visor flickered. Systems adjusted. The artifact, still floating in its containment field behind Cortana's holo-pedestal, gleamed with that deep internal glow. No flickers. No wild energy spikes. Just… a reminder.

We hadn't left it behind. And wherever we were headed next, it wanted us there.

"Now," Whitcomb said, "let's deal with our tail."

Cortana didn't need more prompting.

In an instant, the Ascendant Justice came to life like a reawakened leviathan. The alien vessel's gravity field surged, and the pulse of its engines vibrated up through my boots like the growl of a starship made of thunder and fire.

"Firing primary plasma batteries and ventral beam turrets," Cortana said crisply.

The Covenant cruisers that had pursued us from the halo ring didn't even have time to react. They blinked into local space just behind us, still trying to adjust their sensors after the wild slipspace ride, when the Ascendant Justice struck.

A searing column of violet plasma ripped through the lead cruiser's prow. A second blast—this one from a ventral array we hadn't even activated during the escape from Halo—lanced into the second vessel's flank.

I watched as both ships shuddered, tried to course correct, and then exploded in twin spheres of blue-white fire. The shockwaves rippled across the star's magnetic field like glass shattering underwater.

"Targets neutralized," Cortana announced with far too much satisfaction.

"Casualties?" Whitcomb asked.

"None. Clean kill. They were still re-initializing weapon systems when we hit them."

The bridge was silent for a long moment. Not in awe. Not in fear.

Just focused.

We'd won that skirmish. But it was just a skirmish.

"Begin scan for residual Covenant transmissions," Whitcomb ordered. "If they were heading to Tau Ceti, others may have made it already."

"Already on it," Cortana replied. "But Tau Ceti's planetary alignments are dense. We'll have to make a wide arc around the system's star to avoid detection and get visual confirmation."

"And the artifact?" I asked.

A beat passed. Cortana's form dimmed slightly.

"Dormant for now," she said. "But I don't recommend touching it."

"Wasn't planning on it."

"Good," Halsey chimed in from the observation deck. "Because the last time you did, the laws of physics went from 'guideline' to 'mood swing.'"

The crew chuckled—nervously.

John was beside me, silent as always, but his posture told me everything. He didn't like this situation. The silence. The stillness. He preferred the bang and burn of war to the unknown. At least in combat, you knew what wanted you dead.

This—whatever the Covenant were doing in Tau Ceti—was different.

Too quiet. Too orchestrated. Like we were approaching the center of a play that had already started without us.

"Captain," Cortana said, breaking the silence. "We'll complete the arc around the star in two hours. After that, I'll have a clear line to the inner system."

Whitcomb nodded. "Get us eyes on whatever they're doing. The instant you confirm a target cluster—fleet, ground base, whatever—we start planning."

Then he turned to John and me.

"In the meantime, get the Spartans ready. If we're going to strike, it'll be fast, and it'll be hard."

"Understood," John said.

I just nodded. Our way of saying let's go to work.

The prep room was quiet except for the hum of systems.

I stood beside my armor rack, my Mjolnir suit gleaming under low amber lights. Fred and Kelly were already suited up. Li and Joshua were checking equipment, while Linda—now awake—sat sharpening a combat knife, one hand still bandaged.

I ran a systems check on BT-7274's integration module. My Titan AI pinged back.

"Link stable. All subsystems green. You ready, Pilot?"

"Always."

Outside, the stars shifted slightly. The Ascendant Justice crept through the star's shadow like a shark under ice.

Whatever waited for us in Tau Ceti—we were coming.

And this time, we were hunting.

There are moments when the universe decides to remind you just how small you are.

This was one of those moments.

The Ascendant Justice emerged from the cover of the star's corona like a phantom from the grave. Its plasma-scarred hull groaned under the slow drift. The bridge was tense—deathly quiet—as we rounded the solar horizon and finally caught a full view of what the Covenant were hiding in the Tau Ceti system.

Even John took a step forward.

No one spoke.

No one breathed.

"By the mantle…" Cortana whispered.

Before us hung a structure so massive, so unnatural, it made even the scale of Halo feel quaint. A space station—if you could call it that—shaped like a figure-eight. Two massive, bulbous teardrops connected by a central spinal bridge. Each section had to be fifteen kilometers long, easily. Together, it stretched across the stars like a mechanical god's dumbbell—thirty kilometers of absolute precision and terrifying alien power.

And it was alive.

A rotating ring wrapped around the central nexus like a gear on an axis, with dozens—no, hundreds—of Covenant ships latched to it like parasites on a whale. Filament-like tubes, almost organic in their curvature, extended between the two lobes and spiraled along the surface of the ring, glowing faintly with violet and blue illumination.

It wasn't a station.

It was a heart. A machine-beating heart that kept the Covenant war engine running.

And it had five hundred ships guarding it.

Covenant destroyers. Assault carriers. Frigates. Corvette flocks that swarmed like angry bees. Some we recognized. Some we didn't. Some I wasn't even sure had been seen by anyone human and lived to describe it.

Even Fred muttered under his breath. "This is… insane."

I found myself stepping closer to the forward holotank as if the extra meter would help me make sense of what I was seeing. As if my mind would somehow accept the scale if I was just closer to it.

"Contact," Cortana said, voice tight. "We're being hailed… by the station."

Whitcomb, still arms crossed, tilted his head just slightly. "The station?"

"Yes, Admiral. It calls itself… the Unyielding Hierophant. According to Covenant translation subroutines, it's a mobile supply and logistics station. Massive—likely serves as a refit and refuel hub. This is where they rally their ships before launching entire invasions."

There was another beat of silence. Then finally, Whitcomb broke it in a voice that echoed like a half-drunk cannon blast.

"Son of a bitch."

No one even blinked at the profanity. If ever there was a time to swear like a sailor, it was now.

I turned to John. "If this thing's functional, it's the reason they're eating through our colonies like popcorn."

He nodded once. "Kill it, cripple their logistics. Could stall the war."

"Already ahead of you," Cortana said. "I'm going to fabricate a damage report. Feed the Hierophant a fake diagnostic—make it look like we're limping in with a ruptured hull and plasma feed failure. No weapons. No shields. Just an old beaten cruiser asking for help."

"You can do that?" Fred asked.

"I am doing that. Slowing velocity now. Cutting emissions to ten percent. Simulating thermal bleeding. Deploying structural integrity failures on all visible external hardpoints."

Halsey finally spoke up from the port-side data console. "It'll buy us time. Maybe let us dock. But once we're aboard, everything changes."

The Admiral's voice went dark. "Then we make it count."

"Hang on," Cortana said suddenly. "We've got movement."

Every Spartan turned on reflex.

"Where?" John asked.

"Engineering. Lower deck. A heat signature survived the sweep—definitely not human."

"Flood?" I asked.

"No… not quite. It's not acting like a Flood form. It's floating. Minimal mass. Six distinct nodules… four limbs, maybe more. Small—less than two meters across. No aggressive behavior. It's just… watching."

We exchanged glances. That narrowed things down, but not by much.

"Visual coming up now."

Cortana pulled the camera feed onto the forward screen.

And that's when we saw it.

It hovered in the low-light shadows of Engineering. A bulbous, soft-bodied creature with rippling, fleshy folds. Its surface shimmered slightly, like a jellyfish submerged in warm water. Six eyes blinked independently across its upper dome, while four tentacle-like limbs unfurled and folded with eerie grace. The limbs split at their tips into micro-cilia, impossibly fast, too small for the eye to follow. It floated not on thrusters, but by gas bladders, small sacs along its sides inflating and deflating in rhythmic pulses that let it hover like a ghost.

I knew right then—this thing wasn't a soldier.

It was a builder.

"It's… fixing things," I said aloud.

And it was. Even as we watched, the creature began to reconnect plasma conduits and internal wiring like it had been born to do it. Sparks lit the air. The Engineering console rebooted.

It wasn't trying to sabotage us.

It was keeping the ship alive.

Halsey leaned forward slowly. "A Huragok…"

"A what?" Fred asked.

"Covenant designation: Engineer. I've seen the files. Captured footage. We've never had one alive before. Never."

"No hostile intent," Cortana confirmed. "It's aware of us. I've activated internal comms. It's watching the cameras. But it's not attacking."

"Does it know we aren't Covenant?" John asked.

"Almost certainly. Doesn't seem to care. Might not even be fully loyal to them. Its entire purpose is repair and construction. It may have no political alignment at all."

Whitcomb's voice turned sharp. "Can we use it?"

I answered. "Depends. If it's not hostile and keeps the ship running, it's already more help than harm."

Halsey stepped toward the screen, eyes wide. "If we can communicate with it…"

John finished her thought. "We can learn everything."

Cortana turned slightly toward me. "Leonidas. If you're willing, I can reroute a subroutine into your armor's neural interface. Attempt first contact through direct motion translation. It may respond better to biological interfaces."

"Do it."

"Initiating handshake protocol. Let's go meet our new engineer."

I stepped through the bulkhead into Engineering, boots echoing off half-melted Covenant alloy. The lights were dim, flickering irregularly from power reroutes Cortana had been forced to make after we'd hijacked the ship. Plasma scoring still blackened most of the surfaces, but the center of the chamber… it was pristine.

Floating just a few feet above the grated deck was the Huragok.

The alien being drifted in serene, unbothered arcs—calmly tending to power lines and burned-out conduits. One of its tentacles split into hundreds of cilia and massaged a damaged capacitor, its other limbs working with a rhythm no human could match. It didn't hum or make noise. Just… floated in total silence, like a creature from another world that had accidentally wandered into the warzone we called reality.

Cortana's voice echoed in my helmet.

"Remember, Huragok are classified as non-combatants. Even among Covenant forces, they aren't warriors. They build, repair, maintain. Nothing more."

"So we don't shoot it unless it stabs me first. Got it."

"Technically… even if it stabs you, it might be trying to help."

I raised an eyebrow under my visor but said nothing. The Huragok had paused its repairs and now faced me. Not aggressively—no tension, no sudden motion. Just calm curiosity.

I stepped forward slowly and held out the datapad I'd brought with me—standard UNSC-issue tech, loaded with schematics and basic diagnostic routines. I'd programmed it to cycle through visual blueprints of Mjolnir Mk. V armor, our captured Covenant cruiser, and general human technology infrastructure. If this creature liked to fix things, I figured I'd give it something new to play with.

The moment it caught sight of the display, its gas bladders pulsed in excitement. It floated closer, extended a tentacle, and delicately grasped the datapad.

"It's scanning the whole thing," Cortana whispered. "Down to the kernel-level firmware. That pad's about to get the alien tune-up of a lifetime."

The Huragok turned slowly in midair and drifted toward a nearby diagnostics console. With perfect control, it jacked the datapad into a port and began pulling data directly into the ship's systems. It wasn't hacking—at least not in the aggressive way Cortana did. No brute force. No rootkit injections. It was grafting, blending code into place with such precision the console didn't even beep in protest.

Cortana pinged again.

"Leonidas… the Engineer is voluntarily interfacing with our systems. It's updating your armor specs. I think… it's optimizing."

"My armor?"

"Yeah. It's reading your Mjolnir diagnostic logs from the last engagement, analyzing shield degradation patterns. Wait—hang on, it's doing something..."

My HUD flickered for a moment. Then a soft chirp sounded, and a new diagnostic readout scrolled across my visor. Shield capacity… up 40%. Efficiency increased. Heat dissipation up 19%. Shield recharge time—cut by a third.

"Holy hell."

"I think it just gave you an aftermarket warranty upgrade, courtesy of alien space-magic," Cortana quipped.

The Huragok floated back toward me and presented the datapad—its contents now scrubbed clean of any formatting, replaced with a soft green pulse across the screen.

I took it, slotted it into my belt, and nodded in what I hoped was a universal 'thanks.'

The creature fluttered its tentacles and slowly turned in midair to return to its work, but didn't drift far. As I made my way back toward the elevator, it followed. No hesitation. Like it had made a decision.

"Cortana?"

"It's following you."

"I can see that."

"No—I mean it's following you. It's chosen to stay with you. Engineer loyalty doesn't really align with the rest of the Covenant's structure. They go where they feel… useful."

"Guess I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. That thing might just turn the tide of this whole operation."

The Huragok floated just a meter behind me as we made our way to the lift, gliding like a ghost. The Covenant may have designed it to build starships, but now it had attached itself to me. I wasn't about to complain.

When I stepped onto the bridge, every head turned.

Halsey stared first. "A live Engineer… in this theater?"

"She followed me home. Can I keep her?" I said flatly.

Fred let out a sharp laugh. "You name her yet?"

"Was thinking something ironic. Smithy, maybe. Or Wrench."

The Huragok floated beside me silently, slowly spinning midair as it examined the bridge's interface nodes.

Cortana materialized on the central holotank, hands on her hips. "Well, she seems happy enough. But Leonidas isn't kidding. Our shields just got upgraded on every suit you Spartans synced to the bridge diagnostics. Forty percent increase across the board. I've already got telemetry uploads to the remaining Spartans aboard the Gettysburg and Justice."

Whitcomb stepped toward me, half-serious, half-stunned. "If it can do that with just a datapad and a few minutes, what could it do with access to an armory? Or a fabrication bay?"

Halsey was already jotting notes into her datapad, eyes alight. "If this Huragok helps, and if it's willing to share knowledge, even a sliver… this could change everything."

I watched the Huragok slowly orbit one of the side consoles, inserting a tool into a Covenant port and gently realigning power conduits.

"Then let's hope it keeps finding us useful."

Whitcomb nodded, eyes shifting to the forward starfield where the Unyielding Hierophant loomed in the distance like a sleeping titan.

"Because tomorrow…" he said, folding his arms behind his back, "we make them feel pain."

The bridge of Ascendant Justice hummed with the subtle energy of controlled chaos. Holographic models of the Unyielding Hierophant hovered above the main table—an enormous, spinning behemoth nearly thirty kilometers long, flanked by the Covenant armada that nursed from its belly like a swarm of parasites.

We had the ship. We had the crystal. And now… we had a shot.

But as always — no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Whitcomb's voice carried through the room like a sledgehammer. "We hit them from the inside."

He gestured at the Unyielding Hierophant's model, rotating it with his fingers to reveal the structure's exposed ring and twin reactor cores positioned at each end of the figure-eight.

"We have one chance to deal a blow they'll feel across their entire damn empire. That supply depot feeds their fleets. If we can cripple it, we cut off tens of thousands of Covenant ships from resupply and repairs."

"Crippling it isn't enough," John added, arms folded across his chest. "We destroy it."

Whitcomb grinned. "That's the idea."

Cortana's avatar flared above the table. "With respect, Admiral, that's no small task. The Hierophant's reactors are located at opposite ends of the facility. Severing both simultaneously is the only way to trigger a catastrophic chain reaction."

She rotated the hologram to emphasize both ends.

"Standard demolitions aren't sufficient. This will require hands-on sabotage—manual breaches of coolant feeds, overclocked plasma regulators, and detachment of structural fail-safes. Done precisely. Done simultaneously."

"That's where we come in," Fred said, stepping up beside John.

John nodded. "Split teams. Hit both reactors at once."

Whitcomb gave a single approving grunt. "Good. Let's talk infiltration."

Polaski—Warrant Officer Sheila Polaski—stood near the holotank, arms crossed as she eyed the mission model. She'd flown this ship since the moment we snatched it. She was the best non-Spartan pilot in the fleet.

"I'll take the Spirit dropship," she said, gesturing to the Covenant troop transport we'd captured from the hangar. "It's still got functioning IFF codes. They won't question one more inbound shuttle."

"Not for a while," Cortana added with a grim tone.

The ONI spook, Lieutenant Haverson, piped in. "And when they do?"

"We'll be gone," John said flatly.

"Or dead," Emile muttered.

Haverson didn't laugh.

I stepped forward. "We'll copy a fragment of Cortana's runtime. She'll be with us inside the facility. She can hack doors, override security systems, guide us to the reactors."

"'Copy' being the operative word," Cortana interjected. "I cannot be on both ships simultaneously. My core remains with Ascendant Justice. The fragment will assist the insertion team."

"Once we insert," John continued, "Polaski, Haverson, and Locklear will remain aboard the Spirit, guarding the evac point. We'll maintain comms silence unless compromised. Once both reactors are sabotaged—"

Whitcomb cut him off. "—we initiate Phase Two."

His voice lowered, drawing everyone's attention.

"We can't leave any chance the Covenant repair crews salvage that station. Not after we're gone."

The Admiral turned to Halsey, who approached the table carrying a sealed metallic case. She keyed open the locks, revealing a matte-black device roughly the size of a duffel bag, its surface marked with UNSC hazard seals and classified serials. Size smaller than the initial design, thanks to my tech.

"The NOVA," she said quietly.

Silence settled across the room.

Even I tensed. The NOVA Bomb made nuclear weapons look like firecrackers.

Halsey elaborated with clinical detachment. "The NOVA Bomb is a cluster of nine nuclear fusion warheads encased in a lithium triteride case. Upon detonation, the warheads collapse toward one another, amplifying the yield exponentially. Roughly equivalent to the combined firepower of an entire UNSC battle group."

Cortana whistled. "Approximately twenty petatons."

Kelly exhaled. "That's... insane."

"Insanely effective," Whitcomb corrected. "We can't afford half-measures. We place this device in the heart of their fleet. And when it goes off, we eliminate five hundred Covenant warships in a single instant."

"Detonating from inside the Hierophant?" I asked.

Whitcomb shook his head. "Too risky. Once the reactors blow, we won't have time to drop it safely. The NOVA deploys via Pelican dropship directly into their fleet's gravity well once the station destabilizes. Ascendant Justice will make the delivery."

Halsey added, "Its specialized field ensures no sympathetic detonation with our own slipspace drives."

Whitcomb turned back to the team. "The key to this operation is timing. The sabotage teams hit the cores. When they begin to overload, Ascendant Justice swoops in and delivers the NOVA before the entire structure tears itself apart."

"And the pickup?" Fred asked.

"You'll exfil to the Spirit," Whitcomb answered. "Polaski will hold position as long as she can. If the station collapses too quickly, she's authorized to move the Spirit to the lower bay docks for rapid evac."

"We won't miss the rendezvous," John said flatly. "We never miss."

I glanced around the room at my brothers and sisters. Fourteen Spartans—including Sam—would insert. Half would hit the starboard reactor. Half would hit the port. Red Team and Blue Team would divide. We'd done harder things before. But never on this scale.

Cortana's projection narrowed her eyes. "While you execute the mission, I'll ensure no Covenant ships leave the system. I've isolated slipspace transmission protocols and placed a blockade on their communication relays. No reinforcements. No reports. No survivors."

That sent a small chill through the room.

"We're lucky you're on our side," I muttered.

"Exceptionally lucky," she replied with a smirk.

Whitcomb clapped his hands together. "Good. We leave nothing to chance. This is not just an attack—this is a message."

He stepped closer to the table, eyes burning with cold, righteous fire.

"After this, the Covenant will know humanity fights back. We may be down, but we are not defeated. And with the Ascendant Justice in our hands—we'll make damn sure they never forget."

The room went silent. And then every Spartan saluted.

Mission Operation First Strike was a go.