Cath

The Cradle

Wallace’s expression remained static while the others talked, smiling politely. She gave all three of them equal eye contact from her position on the chaise longue, studying them. Without a word, or looking up at Alderney, she accepted a cup and saucer of fragrant tea and cradled it with both hands. Her servant bowed, and having finished his duty, padded back towards the doors.

“Yes, so I'm told. Allow me to apologise again for these unfortunate circumstances.” The double doors closed again behind Alderney, and then promptly disappeared into the wall with a hum. The silence of the office intensified as any connection with the rest of the ship was muffled.

“I hope to secure your release in the coming days, so you can pursue whatever path you decide.” Wallace continued, sipping her boiling hot tea. “My staff have asked for use of the Barbarossa to house you again, the Human elements at least. But the Navy wants to meet you in person beforehand.” Wallace plucked a lokum cube off the floating tray as it went between the group and popped it in her mouth.

The Cradle

Wallace laughed musically along with Nirann as she sashayed across the spherical office. “Oh yes. I have fun wherever I am. I realised a long time ago that waiting patiently for your life to become more enjoyable will often prove disappointing. One must act.”

A left-hand chaise longue constructed for Wallace as she approached the far end of the seating area. The Plenipotentiary arranged herself elegantly across it, with her back to the main transparent bulge. She spared barely a glance at the floodlit lake depths around them. Freyr couldn’t help but track a mobula-type creature as it flapped past the back of the ship. The seat she’d chosen, closest to the door, seemed more like one big amorphous cushion than an actual chair. She gripped the material on either side of her to avoid sinking any further.

“Is that what you’re expecting tonight? A good time?” Wallace showcased her perfect teeth in a smile, as the double doors glided open again. Alderney entered, followed by a floating tray of tea and sweet treats. They stopped to one side of the group, and began decanting the steaming hot liquid into dainty cups.

The Cradle

“I run most of my business from this ship.” Wallace motioned grandly to their blurred surroundings as she led them through the wide aisle towards the stern with her two aides in tow. Freyr thought she could see movement through the blurred forcefields all around. People, perhaps? Deep purple and pink and blue lights blinked on and off, like lighthouses in the fog. Two people stepped out from behind the curtain and onto the gangway, but stopped and let them pass. Each bowed deeply to Wallace, their faces blurred beyond all recognition.

“It offers me a greater degree of discretion than Rothian worlds, and I can be wherever I'm needed. We have state of the art signal tech on board, courtesy of our Friends below Babylon.” Freyr realised now that she’d worked on some of the components for this type of ship, nearly half a decade ago now. She cleared her throat nervously, still in awe of the things they’d deployed without fully understanding them.

They arrived at a grand set of doors, flanked by two guards in elaborate dress. “Chirtsey, make Sergeant Skopec comfortable please. Alderney, serve us some tea in my office.” Wallace commanded her two servants, as the doors opened up ahead of them. The Institute soldier looked apoplectic with rage, Freyr realised, but didn’t say anything as the rest of the party followed the Plenipotentiary.

The Cradle

Wallace mulled it over for a moment, before shrugging delicately. “Very well. It’s highly irregular, but these are changing times, I suppose. My servants will find a place for them on the vessel and ensure they’re deafened while inside.” The Plenipotentiary clicked her tongue on the top of her mouth, and smiled graciously. “Sergeant, see to it that this person is brought to me post-haste. And don’t let anyone else find out where they are going, thank you.”

“Yes ma’am.” Skopec grunted, his eyes glazing over as he conveyed the order.

Wallace glanced between Marae and Freyr. “Happy? We can’t be too long - I’m making a lot of people quite unhappy by showing up like this.” Her voice lowered to a conspiratorial level. “Quite exciting, isn’t it?” She smirked.

Freyr didn’t understand what was about to happen, but the Plenipotentiary had piqued her natural curiosity. It wasn’t like she was going to get a full and restful night’s sleep anyway. “Blast it, I'm in. If only for a change of scenery.”

Skopec stepped forward, beside Marae. “I’m coming too, to make sure they return in one piece.” Wallace beamed at his scarred face. “I knew that already. Chirtsey will show you to a jumpseat.” She motioned to her left, and one of the black-and-white robed orderlies bowed. The dark maelstrom floating around their head flared, as though lightning had riven the clouds.

“Shall we go aboard? I don’t want to dither.”

Halo: Aegis Team

Evolving to live in cave systems afforded a few natural advantages to Tengmaa plants. The rocky cliffs sheltered its delicate bulb from the brunt of Brissekh’s unforgiving weather cycles, and providing a safe place to grow.

The channels of water had also carved downward slopes and collection points over millennia, allowing the use of gravity to deliver its prey. The steep slide down into the basin chamber which Aegis team was still traversing was testament to that. Many creatures found it difficult to get back up.

Crucially though, the studious Tengmaa had realised these cramped tunnels leading to the basin provided an ideal oesophagus to force food into its stomach. It expended a lot of energy, but often resulted in the target plopping into the water, where the dense mat of cilia quickly trapped and drowned it.

Realising it had something with searing weapons in its throat, the Tengmaa activated its oesophagus mostly out of desperation. Aegis team may have noticed this first as a rumbling and rattling back up at the top of the cave system. Thick vines underneath the parked Spectres flexed and warped, sending the vehicles crashing against each other.

This tension moved down quickly down the throat, with vines on all rock surfaces bowing outwards to push everything towards the bulb. In a couple of seconds, this wall of matter would smash into Aegis’s rearguard like a truck, most of whom were yet to find space on the narrow platform above the bulb chamber.

With both a Sangheili and a mechanical Spartan pulling against the determined vines, Tar hissed from the pain in her arms and down her sides. For a moment, she thought her arms would break, but just before they did, those vines relented their grip and she flew back up onto the platform.

Toxic vapour from the pool and the cut vines was filling the air, so Tar could scarcely breathe without coughing when she tried to breathe through bruised lungs. “Fire! Fire!” She wheezed, barely audible over the general chaos of the chamber.

The Cradle

Wallace turned her head a fraction of an inch to look at Marae. She smiled, then gulped, stretched her jaw, and spoke back to her in a flawless Rothian tongue. “Greetings. I’m honoured to meet you, Marae’Ano. Your reputation precedes you. My name is Wallace, Plenipotentiary for the great world of Outremer. Have you been well-treated?” To Freyr, the Plenipotentiary’s voice continued to be understandable and the same tone as before. Her lips just no longer matched what her implants were feeding back to her.

Skopec clanked up next to her. “I can’t allow you to break lockdown on a whim and ride around with her. It’s not safe.” His voice was low and vitriolic. Freyr turned her head and looked up at him. She realised that his body language was that of a man who’d been frustrated in an argument not long before. Wallace noticed him squaring up to the scientist, and politely interrupted Marae’s answer, back in Human tongue.

“Sorry, Marae. Sergeant - leave the poor woman alone please. She’s been through enough.”

Skopec gritted his teeth, which gradually turned into a strained smile when he realised he would need to try a different tact with this mysterious woman. He turned towards Wallace. “I will have to inform my commanding officer about your arrival, ma’am.”

“They already know I’m here.” Wallace replied, a an air of superiority wafting across her crystalline face.

The Cradle

As they turned back to look at their (hopefully) temporary prison, Freyr spotted Masgard Xandrus stepping out into the rain. He spotted them, caught her eye and stood still with hands tucked behind his back. Water dripped down his business suit and through his neatly trimmed hair and beard. “I, umm…I think our solicitor wants us.” Freyr pointed.

“Sorry to disturb, but someone is here to see you.” He intoned once they’d made their way back toward the entrance, Freyr’s rain cover soundlessly following them.

“Really? Whoever could it be?”

“Plenipotentiary Wallace, ma’am.” The name immediately rung a bell, but Freyr had to think hard for a moment to place where she’d heard it before.

“Oh! From Threria? We met her in that club. What does she want?”

“That’s right. She didn’t say. They’re in the landing bay now. What should I tell them?”

“Hold on, I thought nothing was allowed in or out of here?”

“Her kind do not adhere to the same rules as us mere mortals.” A wry smirk escaped across Masgard’s face.

---

Freyr had no idea what to expect as they hurried to greet Wallace, and soon realised there was no point trying to guess. When they entered the landing bay, her eyes started hurting. Wallace’s ship was large, pebble-shaped from what she could tell, and almost entirely unidentifiable. Some kind of coating or shielding obfuscated the craft, blending it into the surroundings and offending Freyr’s very eyes when she surveyed it. A low hum filled the room, setting her teeth on edge.

Plenipotentiary Wallace resurfaced in Freyr’s memory as soon as she saw her. Really, there was no way to forget the diplomat. She had grown even taller in some different shoes, and the fabulous purple gown she’d worn before was replaced by a bright white stola, encrusted with tiny, deep blue stones. Her long white hair was slicked down the back like she’d just been swimming, and a glittering constellation of metalwork sat delicately atop her head in the form of an elaborate headpiece.

Two aides flanked Wallace, men in smart black and white robes who stood with their hands at their sides. A small dark cloud obscured both their faces, generated presumably by the ship they’d arrived in. Six guards with ceremonial armour and weapons stood in two lines behind them. Skopec and an assortment of Institute soldiers stood around, looking unimpressed. Skopec began walking over when Freyr and Marae entered the landing bay with Xandrus. Wallace just smiled.

“My dears, so good to see you alive and well! I’m sorry to drop in so unexpectedly, but i was in the area and wondered if you wanted a ride? We have so much to catch up on.”

Halo: Aegis Team

"Jackal in the courtyard!"

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar tapped her bottom mandibles together in disgust at the sight and smell of this chamber. Though the entrance to the thin ledge was tight for her Sangheili frame and light was sparing, the stench from this pit threatened to overwhelm her senses. A pool of water below lapped against the rocks - with her eyes now adjusted to the low-light she could just about make out the bodies suspended in it. As she watched, a mesh of vines floated to top all along the pool’s surface, in between the bigger carcasses.

“Look. Grenades won’t reach the bulb.” Tar pointed as more vines began shaking all around them. She knew that if something fell on top of that mesh, it would sink under the water before trapping whatever it had caught. Countless animals would have drowned in pure panic down there.

A glimmer of light reflected off a shiny stone embedded in the exposed stomach of a beast in the pit. Tar looked up. An opening was just visible on the other side of the chamber, angled up towards the sky. “There is the path up the mountain!” Tar gestured to the chute, and began looking for a way across. For some reason, she remembered there being hand and foot holds across, but couldn’t see any beneath the melee of vines coating the walls.

“Move back!” Tar growled as someone from the team behind her pushed out of the throat and onto the platform to assess the situation. She dug her heels in and spread her arms wide, which unfortunately coincided with a vine surfacing from the groove it had been resting in. It took her weight, then abruptly reared up and pulled back towards the bulb.

Tar lost her footing and slipped over the side of the platform. She turned as she fell, and her hip clattered onto the ledge. Making a split-second decision, Tar dropped the blade in her hand and used both to grasp at the rocks as she fell. For a heart stopping moment, it didn’t feel like she had anything. One hand passed by the edge of the precipice, but her left arm juddered in its socket as she held firm on a point of rock on the very edge. She could hear her sword snicker against an outcrop below her, then plop into the water with a loud fizz, cutting through a clutch of cilia.

All hell broke loose in the chamber. Every vine which wasn’t yet moving burst into action, either actively seeking out the intruders or trying to deny any purchase on the rocks. The smell intensified, and the sound was that of guts slopping around in a bucket.

The Cradle

Freyr listened closely as Marae recounted her experiences. She couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the life her counterpart had led. To usher in the dawn of a new era for their whole civilization seemed like a truly humbling experience. Freyr wondered whether she even wanted to pull forth the same sort of realisation from the Cradle. For over a decade, she had relentlessly pursued its secrets, looking for the answer to self-regenerative AI, limitless computing power, full consciousness mapping via simulation. But now, for the first time, Freyr was growing afraid of what their research might find.

Marae’s question brought her back to the present. Freyr lifted her eyes from the paved floor beneath them and looked at the Rothian.”Yeah, uh…hmm, maybe now isn’t the best time.” She smiled sheepishly. “What did you have in mind?”