Cath

The Cradle

“Thank you, Marae’Ano. It’s good to meet you all as well. We’ve received a warm welcome on Rothia, for which we’re very grateful. As a token of our appreciation, please accept this humble gift, delivered on behalf of the Outremer administration.” Andersen turned in her seat and motioned with one hand. The silent soldier in the blue armour marched over to a side table between the two parties and carefully placed the wooden box they’d been carrying on it.

“The box was crafted by hand from a bough of the Threnody Root, a unique, protected tree system that grows in the caves of Outremer’s south pole. Inside, is the Phoenician Staff. Part of a collection, this staff was originally part of the engine casing for the first colonist ship to touch down on Outremer, three hundred and fifty years ago.” Freyr had heard of the Staffs. The colonial administration ordered their creation after the first contact ships were retired. They used parts, each with a unique documented story to tell from the journey across. She realised she really wanted to see it in person.

“Now, shall we get to the part of the meeting everyone is here for?” Captain Andersen grinned, drumming her fingers on the table in front of her. “Can you please bring up your latest scans of Rothia’s surface?” She asked the Rothian delegation in front of her. When a 3d model of the planet appeared in the middle of the table, slowly spinning, Andersen pulled a small hard drive from her chest pocket. She stood up and carefully slid it across the table. “Plug this in.”

Once the coordinates had been inserted, the double-sided hologram moved to one end of the table, so everyone could see. The viewpoint zoomed in on a one hundred mile square of the planet. A pulsing red dot appeared on the surface of the ocean, about fifty miles from the nearest landmass. “That...is where we should look first, ladies and gentlemen. We believe whatever our Cradle was trying to talk to must be at the bottom of the ocean, or inside the planetary crust. Any questions?”

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar 'Mdalak

---

Tar growled and let go of the grey Spartan’s arm. She felt slightly embarrassed for having not realised she may have been hurting the Human. She quickly rose to her feet and looked at the older, shorter Sangheili in red armour who was apparently addressing her. He was asking her if she wanted to fight with them. Tar briefly took in the aerial battle raging around the perimeter of the installation, with an asymmetric space battle wrapping up above, and made her choice. “I can fight. Tar ‘Mdalak, Special Operations. Reporting for duty.”

Tar pushed past the Elite in red armour and took a knee on the edge of the group, facing the ramp into the heart of the installation. She half raised her pistol and quickly scanned for any signs of lingering combatants. “We should get inside. We’re too exposed out here.” Tar recommended. She remembered from the half briefing she'd received on the mission that they were after a high-value target. Inside the structure was almost certainly where they'd be hiding.

The Cradle

Freyr recoiled slightly upon seeing the large, crimson-eyed and obsidian-scaled Rothian that stood between them and the entrance to the skyscraper. It was massive, probably around nine feet. Freyr wondered whether this imposing stature had been engineered, or whether Rothians just had a rather large variation in body types.

With her hair whipping about in the wind, Freyr watched the second craft’s doors as they opened to let the occupants out.

Captain Andersen was the first to appear, flanked on the right by a holographic representation of her XO. Freyr could see a small orb with multiple projectors floating in the middle of the man’s semi-translucent body.

On the captain’s left was another large object, that Freyr quickly made out to be a person covered from head to toe in light blue armour. They were tall, over seven foot, with broad shoulders. Like the looming Rothian welcome wagon, they didn’t hold a weapon. Instead, they carried a hefty wooden box of an exquisite design.

Behind these three, Freyr made out a smattering of the Barb’s other senior staff members and the Outremer Security Council delegate, most of whom she hadn’t talked to yet.

The two groups converged in front of the Datius, the captain nodding a greeting at Freyr. She was the one who spoke for them all, in the end. “Gladly. Please, lead the way.”

The Cradle

Freyr went with the flow through customs, taking her jabs and questions with a smile. She had been in multiple briefings with the captain and her senior staff, where they’d made it clear that they were guests on Rothia. If their hosts were keen to proceed through a rigamarole before ferrying them to their next destination, so be it. Eventually they were ushered into waiting shuttles and powered toward the surface.

Pretty much everyone packed against the windows and chattered noisily as Threria came into view. Freyr muscled herself toward a porthole next to Masgard and took in the long, non-linear skyscrapers and gorgeous mountains in the background. “So, have you brushed up on your Rothian law?” Freyr asked, pausing to watch his exquisite bearded face. He laughed. “Don’t get me started on Rothian law. I hope you’re on your best behaviour.” He wiggled his eyebrows, making her blush.

After a little while, Freyr felt the shuttle slow and they came in to land atop one of the city’s upper platforms. As they turned to park, she could see another shuttle close behind them, which must have contained the captain and her staff.

The Cradle

“Very impressive. But, can it go three rounds in the ring with me?” 595 asked, raising her fists and bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if to brawl the supercarrier. She tested out six lightning fast jabs on the air that were quite hard to track with the naked eye, ducking left and right. Freyr giggled watching her and Vreta’s expression. 595 was wearing a black, skin tight combat suit today instead of her usual uniform. Her yellow hair was in a tight braid down the back of her head. Freyr thought she looked quite striking.

“That ship has quite an organic shape, is there a reason for that?” Masgard asked, pointing to the supercarrier. Freyr looked at it and even as someone who wasn’t generally interested in warships (apart from the AIs that helped run them), was intrigued by the massive ship’s unique silhouette.

The Barb sailed past the supercarrier, but they didn’t go too much further until a massive space structure loomed in the forward observation window. Freyr guessed it was some kind of orbital docking station, as several smaller craft were already clinging to it. They sidled up alongside the dock as Freyr carried on marvelling Rothia and it’s incredible black hole. Soon after, a voice sounded over the tannoy. “This is your captain. Docking is complete and a full stop has been achieved. Welcome to Rothia, everyone.” A few people cheered exuberantly as most of the crew began filing out of the observation deck. “Shall we go?” Freyr asked of everyone. “Don’t want to keep people waiting.”

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar 'Mdalak

---

Tar’s view was obscured by the large crate in front of her, so she didn’t see the Brute captain get hit. But when the relentless force against her from the Brute Shot abated, Tar dropped her cover, pulled her pistol from her mandibles and pointed it where her aggressor had been. She discovered the Brute was missing his head and some of his shoulders. He fell to his knees and then onto his side.

Tar growled; part of her had wanted the captain alive so she could question him about her father. The ships were being destroyed above them, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that important clues were being destroyed with them. Nevertheless, she appreciated the assist - wherever that had come from...

Tar pivoted and saw the last of the rebels running down a ramp into the belly of the Forerunner structure. She fired her pistol at them until the bullets ran out and then moved to kneel by another dead rebel. Keeping her eyes up to scan the battlefield, Tar pulled two magazines from the female’s tactical vest. She deftly reloaded with one of them, checking the new rounds were chambered correctly before standing. She held the second mag against the pistol grip, comfortably secured by her long Sangheili fingers.

Before her eyes, a fast moving object slammed into the ground ahead of her, throwing up a cloud of dust. Tar cautiously moved forward with her pistol out and slightly tilted in front of her. Gradually, the dust settled and Tar saw another Spartan in grey and silver armour on the floor. She knelt beside the downed Spartan and lifted their forearm off the floor as a few more presumed members of Aegis team gathered around. “Can you hear me? Are you operational?” Tar shouted over the sound of gunfire, peering into the soldier’s individual eye holes and gently shaking their arm.

The Cradle

The Welcome Wagon

The rest of Barbarossa's two week journey to Rothia passed in a flurry of activity for Freyr. The discovery of Cradle-like interference in Rothian genetics had to be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt. The team cross referenced seven different Cradle creature samples with the complete library of Rothian DNA history Vreta provided. On day four, Freyr could say with some certainty that a complex message was hidden in Vreta’s junk DNA. Part of that message was incomprehensible, but they were able to extract the same coordinates the comms array had pinged back on Outremer.

After a couple of mandated delays, they tested a sample of Human DNA in the same way on day three. 595 showed up with a delegate from the Security Council and classified it Top Secret, meaning the experiment was conducted behind closed doors.

Apart from work, which took up about seventy percent of her waking hours, Freyr spent time in the combat simulator with 595 and (sometimes) Masgard. They practiced on targets and gradually became more familiar with a variety of weapons. Freyr found out that Masgard was something of an Outremer aristocrat; he could trace his lineage back to the small first wave of colonists that landed on the planet. He had been a partner at one of Babylon’s top law firms before being poached to work for the Director-General.

Freyr couldn’t coax any details out of Agent 595, not even her real name. The captain had referred to her as ‘from Cradle Security’, but Freyr sincerely doubted that was the case. CraSec, up until a few months ago, had been a bunch of glorified night watchmen. Behind 595’s friendly, occasionally excitable persona was a vicious solo operator who seemed at ease in extremely dangerous situations. On day seven, she clinically dismantled multiple combat droids in hand to hand combat with Freyr and Masgard watching in disbelief. The same day, 595 insisted on clearing a kill house meant for four people on her own.

To unwind from all this, Freyr spent a bit more time in the beach room. However she couldn’t stay in there alone, often electing to invite Vreta. That was on her own, she always ended up thinking about how she never got the chance to take David and Amy to a beach. In fact, every one of Freyr’s waking moments not occupied by frenzied activity somehow wound back to thinking about her family. She did not sleep easily, and her dreams were plagued by Cradle monsters.

She was excited to see Rothia, having read up on what to expect beforehand. But when Vreta invited her to the observation deck on arrival day, it surpassed all expectations. “Oh, wow!” She exclaimed, covering her open mouth with both hands at the sight of the famed black hole. “Look at that..” Masgard murmured beside her. “Very picturesque, Vreta’Sori! I can see why you wanted us to come all this way now.” 595 grinned, patting the top of Vreta’s tail where a Human’s behind would’ve been. Freyr’s team were like kids in an aquarium, pressing their noses to the glass to get as close as possible. “Such a pretty planet, too!” Freyr cooed, taking in all the colours of the rings. She took pictures via her implant and resolved to show them to David and Amy when she saw them next.

The Cradle

Freyr looked at Vreta and immediately realised she’d been insensitive. This discovery, if correct, could change everything he thought he knew about himself. She was still learning Rothian expressions, but her new friend seemed “Yes of course, we’ll make sure we’re one hundred percent certain before going any further.” She reached out and put her hand on Vreta’s as it lay forlornly across the console, giving it a squeeze. “Everything is going to be OK, i promise.”

Vreta’s last question caught Freyr off guard - she withdrew her hand and scratched her head. “I suppose, no...we haven’t. We’ve only been able to analyse organic tissue samples from Cradle creatures for a few months. I don’t think we’ve looked at our own DNA…” Freyr looked around at her team, and a few of them shook their heads. “But I can see your logic...Dr Hou, get me a swab kit!” The lab was now in a frenzy, and Freyr quickly blocked out all non-participants.

“I think we should leave them to it. We’ll only get in the way of this well-oiled machine.” 595 said, appearing at Vreta’s side again. She wanted to get the Rothian away from the lab in case another earth-shattering discovery was made; information was flowing a little bit too freely right now. Then, she could buy some time to report back to her superiors and get her orders.

The Cradle

“Yes, the Cradle has its own language that is baffling in scale and complexity. We don’t understand all of it yet, but we should be able to at least pick up this ‘signature’ if it appears.” Freyr explained as a shape moving into the lab caught her eye. Looking up, she saw Agent 595 approaching, a curious look on her face. “What’s going on in here?” She asked, wearing a polite smile. Freyr began to explain, but a noise from the console interrupted her halfway through.

“Oh my…” she murmured, utterly engrossed in the data displaying in her overlay glasses. Dr Hou began shouting excitedly in Cantonese and grabbed one of his colleagues to double check. “Vreta... i think we have a match!” Freyr looked up at the alien, eyes shining behind her glasses. On the hologram, numerous small patterns were simultaneously detected and pulled out of the double Helix. “Your DNA presents multiple similarities with a Cradle design!”

Pretty much everyone in the lab had stopped to watch this experiment unfold by this point. When the results came in, they all began excitedly whooping, yelling, chatting and crowding around Freyr to congratulate her. She grinned broadly, still unable to believe what she was seeing. She returned a few high fives before dishing out further orders; namely to decode the exact coordinates from the data. Her team swirled around her like a shoal of fish as they got to work.

595 came around to Vreta’s side and watched his expression with an inscrutable stare. “Welcome to the family. What’re you going to do now?”

The Cradle

“Perhaps. Direct communication between the Cradle and anything outside Babylon’s biosphere is basically impossible. In theory, you could transmit information indirectly through all of the connections the Cradle has with our infrastructure on Outremer.” Freyr mused as they rounded a large bank of workspace to the console. She shooed Dr Hou away from the interface's main seat in Cantonese and began manipulating a holo of a double helix, regressing Vreta’s DNA back to its original form.

“However, these connections are basically all one way: outward from the Cradle. Which means any inward traffic would raise flags that are closely monitored. The most public devices I can think of that freely send information into the Cradle are the entry harnesses and implants. But even then, they serve the quite simple purpose of associating that person with a Cradle ID. No wiggle room for other information that i can think of...”

With the DNA strand returned to a pre-augmented state, Freyr and several of her team stripped it back even further. They pulled at the thread that was evolution, following a trail of mutations back through the entire history of the Rothian species. “So with conventional signals unlikely, where does that leave us? We know the Cradle has the ability to manipulate DNA, from the creatures that attacked us. What if, whatever may be on Rothia...did something similar to you, in the hope that you’ll find your way to the Cradle? With a similar ‘signature’ style, the Cradle would be able to recognise anything related to it straight away. Moreover, the Rothia entity could encode all sorts of information into your genes, including patterns that can be converted into coordinates.”

With Vreta's DNA now devolved to a very early point in Rothian development, Freyr motioned for her team to stop. Putting on a pair of overlay glasses to add some of the annotations back into her view of the holo, Freyr brought in a DNA sample found in all of the Cradle creature samples. Dr Hou and several more of the team activated a machine learning algorithm to detect similarities and patterns. Parts of each structure began quickly highlighting as the program cross-referenced them.