Cath

The Cradle

“Regardless of whether maintaining a foothold in the Cradle is worth it or not, those men and women are following orders. Just the same as all the rest of us here.” The Facilitator spat, sweeping his arm around the room again. His voice was low but pointed, so as not to disturb the others. The two of them had evidently been sparring for a while, Freyr thought, glancing back.

“You wanna leak more classified video to the press? Be my guest - the media has already splashed it all over the news cycle. We are seeing this through, unless we hear otherwise. The alternative is rolling back three and a half centuries of progress.” He argued.

“Sir. The Cabinet Office for you.” An aide waved a phone at the Facilitator from the wall behind them.

“One second.” The Facilitator turned and called to Dr Lang, who was staring intently at the report she’d been handed. “Dr Lang - please give me some good news when I get back!” He turned and brushed past Rareth to take the call.

The Cradle

The Facilitator didn’t seem keen on debating the merits of a free press right at this second. He also didn’t appear to think much of Rareth’s proposed strategy. He huffed himself. “Any of these geniuses will tell you that we need to be inside the Cradle to properly observe.” He motioned around the lab. “All of this equipment depends on readings taken from around our occupied space in the simulation. Isn’t that right, Dr Lang? We aren’t leaving ground zero - our people inside know the risks. If you want to pull your super squad out, one of these gentlemen would be delighted to give the order.” He waved his hand dismissively towards the planners sitting nearby.

Freyr looked round absently when her name was called, but she wasn’t listening anymore. One of her staff had sidled over and placed a summary document with everything they’d learned so far and enquiry paths they were to follow next. Practically everything on the page was a potential breakthrough they would’ve worked a generation for in the past. Freyr was still too wired up from her experience in the simulation to take that much data on board. “We need to find out how the Navigator forced the internal door open too. Can you follow up with Systems on that?” She whispered instead.

“I can’t let anyone leave this facility until we’ve been given the all clear.” The Facilitator carried on speaking to Rareth. “The safest place for everyone right now is inside this Vault, I can assure you. The staff here have been thoroughly vetted.”

The Cradle

“We can operate most of the transit network, including at the Bridge. But a combination of signal black spots and inoperable infrastructure mean we only have about 5% coverage of a shifting comms web at any one time.” The closest analyst explained while multitasking on screens.

“21st Battalion is ready to go in. I have their orders here - six company locations..” Another older analyst piped up, holding a hardline receiver against their shoulder while they called across the bank of consoles. Pinching a file off the screen next to them, they threw it across the room at the analyst closest to Vreta and Freyr.

“Have we tried talking to it?” Freyr didn’t really want to be on the military side of the room. Her team were busily working away towards the front - she eyed them longingly. “Yes, nothing yet.” The Facilitator replied distractedly, as his pad began vibrating. He checked it. “You should know that word of what's happening here has leaked to the public. Your faces are all over the news.” He spun the pad round so they could see what was on the screen.

A respectable conservative news agency had published amateur pictures of CraSec shooting infected people in New Antioch’s administration district The title above them read: “SECRET PLOT TO ‘UNLOCK’ CRADLE LINKED WITH DEADLY EXPLOSIONS”. Below the main spread was a little security camera picture of Freyr & Vreta pushing through the crowd at the space station upon arriving back at Outremer. The space station that was now a floating cloud of debris.

“We have well and truly ripped off the sticking plaster now.” The Facilitator smiled grimly.

The Cradle

"The non-essential civilian drawdown is nearly complete." The Facilitator assured Vreta, flicking a map of the Cradle's surface up on a big screen by them. Numerous dots indicated evacuation centres, with datapoints listed to one side of each. "As these sites are closed down, CraSec, OCI, a mess of private contractors and your Void team are being pulled back to protect the Bridge and key transit hubs until this surge passes." He explained, pointing to a red hexagon that denoted the link between the Cradle and the outside world.

Motioning quickly, the Institute officer led them to the back row of computers, where a variety of military co-ordinators and high ranking officers had congregated. Rareth Jharn peered over them. "Run the clip we were just talking about." The Facilitator badgered one of the analysts on the end of the row. They ran a video in the corner of their busy screen.

It showed footage from someone's chest cam, amid a chaotic scene of smoke, plasma and shouts. The soldier was running along a high walkway on the side of the Bridge's main tower. metre long spikes rained down on the defenders, pinning people to walls in a mist of blood. Fleshy creatures with six legs, claws and a barbed tailed clambered up the sides of the tower around them. "Stop." The Facilitator said, and the frame froze.

"Zoom in. There they are. Comms are still patchy, but the unit you split up with made contact ten minutes ago. We also found them in this footage."

The Cradle

“Me too!” Freyr exclaimed, eyes searching the room as she pieced together her experience. The orderlies helped them out of the harness - she felt really wobbly and had to grab one of them and sit down again. “It knows where my family is, they’re alive! It’s going to rescue them for me!” Freyr had found out a great deal more than that, but this is what floated to the surface of her memory first.

After a moment, Vreta’s own words sunk in. “Andromeda?” Freyr’s eyes were like saucers. “I remember the...Navigator saying that's where it spent most of its time, with its...family? I guess? My theory is that they have a deep symbiotic relationship with the Cradle. It's their home, hospital, interstellar craft, laboratory. In return, they-”

“Sorry to interrupt. Dr Lang, Vreta’Sori, you’ll want to see this.” Freyr looked past the orderly and saw the bald Facilitator standing in the control box through the observation glass. A technician at the console desk there was holding down the intercom button. The anonymous man motioned with his head for them to meet him outside the harness room door. “What about them?” Freyr asked, pointing to the still-sleeping 595 and Osman.

“We’ll keep an eye on them. Come with me.”

---

“Welcome back. We’ll debrief shortly, but I thought you’d want to see...” The Facilitator continued as they exited the harness room and followed him down a different hallway from the way they’d come in. This one went to the main observation lab, instead of the entry gate lab.

“After some initial chaos and turbulence, the asset appears to have bonded with the Cradle and we managed to close the seal. It seems calmer now.”

They entered into a slightly larger rectangular lab, with three banks of consoles facing a big viewing screen. The whole team appeared to have migrated in here while they were under. A few of them waved - there was a palpable excitement in the room. Freyr vaguely noticed that there were significantly fewer CraSec guards in this room, though a few extra suits with compact weapons had appeared.

When Freyr saw what was on the screen, she gasped, clasping one hand over her mouth as a tear of happiness rolled down her cheek. Her weakened legs nearly gave out, so she grabbed hold of a nearby table, supported by the Facilitator. “It’s...beautiful.” She eventually blabbed. Despite everything that’d happened in the Cradle today, she couldn’t help but be ecstatic. One of her life’s dreams had come true.

The picture-perfect screen depicted the Cradle in all its magnificence. Fifty-two metres in diameter, composed of an indescribable pearly white alloy. It hung motionless in the middle of the Vault’s central void. And around it flew the deep black octahedron they now knew as the Navigator. Freyr watched for a few seconds, as the smaller object looped around the Cradle sphere as though it were a shoulder sash, slowly turning on its own axis at the same time.

The Cradle

As Vreta gradually disappeared into the bed of black quicksand, a bright light shone through the clouds above. The Rothian doppelganger began floating up, like an angel of heaven. He stared down and sighed again at Vreta’s pained expression.

“I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I didn't want to do this. I can tell you want to help, but I can't trust you to follow simple instructions when it matters. You have all evolved too far.”

The Navigator surveyed the Rothian agent as the black tar sucked up past his chest and lapped around his neck. His lizard head was all that remained, tongue noisily tasting the air.

“It’s alright. We can fix that together, can’t we? Dispense with the other intelligences and bring life to the universe, side by side...Shhhh. Sleep now.” The Navigator soothed Vreta as he disappeared into the Cradle forever.

---

Freyr choked herself awake in the big Vault harness. The harsh ceiling lights were partially blocked by someone running diagnostics on her panel. “These two are back. It’s ok, you’re safe.” Freyr kept breathing heavily, trembling softly.

She looked round and found Vreta, staring into space but otherwise awake. Freyr looked in the other direction - 595 was still asleep in her pod, as was Major Osman. “Where...where are we?” Freyr asked, confused.

“You’re in the Vault, ma’am.” The orderly confirmed, mechanically releasing all their inserts.

“Drink this water, you’re very dehydrated.”

Water splashed down Freyr’s front as she eagerly quenched her thirst. Eventually, she turned her focus back to the Rothian. “Are you alright? Where did you go? Back there…”

The Cradle

“After a fashion...yes.” The Rothian grunted, gritting their jaws together. The transformation gripping its body spread from its chest, crawled up its neck. Black and white scales flipped to a new dark green and yellow pattern in a matter of seconds. They spread their hands out to either side and looked up, closed their eyes.

“Raagggghhhh!” Their head was enveloped, flipping and folding like a paper ornament. Both fists clenched while their body floated in the ether across from Vreta. Then all at once, it was over. Both Rothians landed softly on an invisible floor, and two identical Rothians stood facing each other.

“I...Navigate.” The entity breathed a sigh of relief. “You are Vreta’Sori. I am you, and you are now part of me. Together, we are going to do great things.” The Rothian smiled warmly, encouragingly. The floor beneath Vreta began sucking him down into the blackness.

The Cradle

“We’ve inhabited your galaxy for hundreds of millennia. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that one of us controls the Institute.” The Rothian mused, tapping one claw against its chin while watching Vreta. Its surface crawled as scales changed patterns like pixels changing on a screen. It was turning from black and white to green. “At any rate, you all have parts to play in the fight ahead. Cooperation won’t be easy at first, but I'll do my best to bring you together for the greater good.”

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar swore as her Spectre creaked again, trying to fly away in the howling wind. She was taking on a worrying list; her engines whined as she turned the front into the wind and squeezed every ounce of power from them. “Lean into it or we’ll go over!” She bellowed at her passengers. Rain splashed directly into her face off the front hull of the Spectre.

“We should find shelter. This is the rainy season - the worst could still come!” Tar knew all too well the perils of braving events like this, especially on the exposed plateaus where they were headed. Many Sangheili had spilled their blood on the rocky outcrops below.

She frantically cast her eyes around for somewhere they could go while trying to control her Spectre. Visibility was almost nil outside the basin they had been riding through. Then Tar saw the dark green vines plastering the forest floor on one side. She knew immediately what that meant. “Up on our left! There’s a cave system!” Tar called, pointing with her free hand.

The Cradle

The Rothian appeared to become distracted, staring into the nebulous violet clouds. They wafted ever closer, buffeting against an invisible orb of protection around the pair. They glanced back at Vreta while he carried on talking, narrowed their eyes. Opened them again. Their expression smoothed over.

“You two are more alike than you realise.” They laughed in a sound like autumn leaves.

“I’m learning about this ‘Institute’ of which you speak. They have been around for a long time, in one form or another. My aim, to reunite with my family, has been their aim as well for over two thousand years. An admirable devotion.” Their voice tailed off, as if distracted again.