Cath

The Cradle

The two closest Institute operators fired continuous streams of energy at Vreta’s droid as soon as their CO was out of the way. They lit up the dark red corridor, and after a second the entire front of the machine was covered in corrosive plasma. Nirann and the other droid were brushed too in these close quarters. Coils of acrid smoke billowed up into the ceiling ventilation, setting off the fire-defence system for the sector. Sheets of cold water sprayed from all angles.

Skopec gurgled incoherently over comms as the vice-like grip contorted the armour around his throat. He’d managed to pull out his sidearm; he fired it rapidly into the fire door which had been pressed against his suit. Sparks and fires burst from the droid's chest and head as the plasma gouged its armour plating. Its top half spun round full circle and its bottom half staggered forward. Plasma sprayed all over its back and sides until Skopec and the fire door screeched along the opposite wall on another collision course with Vreta.

The other droid didn’t fit back through the exitway when Nirann let go. It moved its one remaining leg to connect with the door frame. It smashed right through, but enough of the momentum was dissipated to avoid it crashing into the third droid and falling back down the stairwell. Instead it rolled in the air before collapsing on the floor.

The third droid sensed an opportunity, trampling straight over its downed colleague with no time wasted. It moved the sharpened girder it held so it pointed straight out in front, to impale Nirann through the abdomen while he was unbalanced. With the other Rothian target directly behind this war machine, it could kill two birds with one stone.

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar rose to her feet as Aegis team surged aboard the downed AA gun. She popped the battery out of her carbine and deftly replaced it with a fresh one while surveying the scene.

The storm had rolled over the spine of the mountain range and right onto their position. Shards of lightning scraped the grey peaks around them and splayed over the massive purple weapon they were trying to disable.

Deafening cracks and booms assaulted Tar’s ears, going over and above even the gunfire below her. Black clouds billowed out to obscure the evening light and the view of the forest valleys below.

The rain was increasing its intensity, and a rising wind was blowing it sideways, creating a silver screen which made a mockery of their previous visibility. A metallic taste registered in Tar’s mouth from the water, and a sulphurous smell wafted into her nose.

Wasting no time, the Commando dropped the dozen metres or so onto the leaning AA gun’s troop platform. Plasma bolts flew everywhere; one activated her shield. Plasma grenades went off nearby, jolting Tar into action. She jogged past Spartan Ryker, firing two shots at his Sangheili opponent as she passed.

She didn’t stop though, turning her attention instead to the gaggle of dazed defenders regrouping behind tangled wreckage in the middle. Looking through her sights, Tar loosed two more shots at an exposed head, and one at another shieldless Kig Yar.

She drew fire for that, so Tar jouked across the platform diagonally, taking advantage of whatever cover existed to try and flank them. This brought her close to a low, thin shelter, partially buried into the deck plating. Tar only noticed it when she was practically on top of it because of the driving wind.

Slowing her pace, she covered the wide entryway and approached at an angle. The noise of battle dimmed in her ears as she focused all her attention on the darkness inside, peering past the waterfall of rain water cascading off the top. Her eyes adjusted slowly. Is that…

Two yellow Sangheili eyes opened to look directly into hers, before dashing forward and up the steps. The lithe black frame of a Hunter Killer was upon her in a second, sword shimmering on to impale her. Tar opened fire.

The Cradle

The droids moved very quickly, their usual collision controls disabled. The one facing Nirann dropped its cannon, leapt forward and grabbed the Rothian’s blade arm near the wrist and at the elbow. The lights in the corridor flicked off, to be replaced by red emergency lighting. The corridor was full of scientific personnel, and most of them were not calm.

As the sword blazed through the droid’s right shoulder, it applied enough force to pick Nirann up and turn right, swinging him around 180 degrees. The droid ultimately aimed to throw the smaller robot back through the twisted fire escape exitway. If that worked, a third blackened droid was waiting with a sharp metal girder, torn from the wreckage, to smash Nirann to pieces.

The second droid’s sensory array detected Vreta rushing up on it from the side. It rose up from its crouching position over the prone Skopec, lifting the Institute soldier up with one arm until he was struggling in mid-air. The robot then swung the Sergeant around, to put him between Vreta and itself. It would then try to club Vreta to the ground or back through the exitway with the combined mass of Skopec’s armour and the attached fire door.

There was pandemonium in the corridor, with scientists attempting to scramble back the way they’d came, often over each other. Institute operators were stuck in the melee, trying to get a clear shot on the assailants.

Masgard Xandrus didn’t try to flee though. His face was determined as he moved forward, trying not to get hit by either Nirann or the first droid as he went for the cannon.

The Cradle

Skopec consulted the building plan quickly, before making a snap decision. “Ok, everyone follow me!” He led them back the way they’d come, away from the blast doors that held back a billowing inferno which was engulfing one side of the tower.

An alarm blared throughout the complex, mingling in with shouting voices. More scientists and staffers emerged from their quarters along the hall to join the growing crowd as they evacuated. Freyr could see smoke billowing past the exterior windows of their individual apartments. She could smell fire from her gurney. Outreman fighters screamed past the arcology again, and another titanic grinding sound rattled the fabric of the building. “Everybody MOVE!” Institute soldiers bellowed at the terrified civilians, pushing them into line behind Skopec.

They turned a corner and kept going east along the southern-most corridor.“Tell them to meet us in the south-east corner.” Skopec glanced back while explaining to Nirann. It's a larger apartment - more floor space and windows! I’ll go down and get-”

The Sergeant never finished, because a solid interior fire door flew away from the wall and crashed into him. A seven foot tall industrial droid ducked under the now-open doorway from the emergency stairwell it had just climbed up. Its retro-fit armour plating was blackened and dented from the impact when the first cargo ship had crashed into the building. Curled up and deactivated, it had survived. Though, its regular uplink light was not flashing.

Ignoring the others, it strode across the corridor and punched straight through the door that was now melded to Skopec’s frame. The Sergeant’s helmet slithered across his face just before the droid could grab his bare neck.

Within half a second, another blackened droid stepped through the opening - this one was carrying an energy cannon. It spooled up rapidly into a full-charge state. “ROTHIA MUST FALL” The droid blared in a robotic voice, before firing from the hip straight at Nirann from close range.

The Cradle

The Rothian interceptors only had a few seconds to avert disaster. Outremer’s command and control infrastructure had only recently gone through a drastic, though reversible, reduction in integration with the Cradle. A gap in centuries of unnaturally-fast reflexes allowed the simultaneous hack of two unmanned cargo ships to remain undetected by air traffic control for a whole minute.

As the first cargo ship’s fiery pieces lit up the night sky and crashed into the south-west side of the tower block, the second one flattened out its approach to the north-west. It screamed past neighbouring towers on a collision course as the swarm of Rothian craft surrounded it. The fighters which clamped onto the freighter exerted a huge effort to pull wide of the safe house.

They fizzed past the safe house block by the narrowest of margins, rattling every window. Then, whoever was controlling the suicide bomber detonated what was left of their interstellar engine, barely a hundred metres from north side of the tower.

Freyr couldn’t see much from on the stretcher, except the robot hovering above her and the harsh lighting set in the ceiling. Then there was smoke, and things started to get quite hot. “Please make your way to the nearest fire exit point, indicated on the floor in front of you.” The building’s attendant AI requested calmly. “Other way! Down to the hangar!” Skopec roared, as a wall of fire licked under the newly emerged set of blast doors at the end of their corridor. The floor shook under their feet, and an alarmingly crisp sound of rending metal sounded from all around them.

Freyr’s vision blurred, and a sudden nausea rose from the pit of her stomach up toward her throat. “I was…somewhere.”

The Cradle

“The last of your forebears developed a resistance to the Cradle in the end; broke a billion year cycle.” The strange entity hissed into Freyr’s ear as she writhed desperately about beneath the dark lake.

“What I need to know is…how you managed to break Us up as well.” Freyr saw a cluster of bubbles push their way out of Vreta’s mouth. Her chest started heaving for air.

“You may be useless now. But the more your Other self learns about us, the more we learn from you.”

With that, whatever was speaking to her pushed Freyr’s body completely into the pool. She felt water rushing past her as she sped through the pitch black space towards the haloed opening where Vreta was also being drowned. She raced towards him, arms outstretched, and closed her eyes.

---

With a gasp, Freyr opened her eyes and instantly regretted it. Bright lights from a drone were shining directly at her, and there were sharp pricks all over her body. People were shouting and moving quickly all around her, but she didn’t know where she was or what they were saying.

“He-...” Her voice cracked. “Help.”

“Subject’s vitals are stabilising.” A drone communicated to the Rothian doctor as Sergeant Skopec stopped the procession halfway down the corridor with an outstretched hand. “Doctor Lang. You’re awake! That is good.” He boomed in his peculiar accent. “We need to get you and your team out of here. It's not safe - too many alien craft attracting attention.” He shot an acerbic look at the Rothian delegation. “We’ve got a transport waiting to take you away. Just be still.”

Just then, Skopec’s eyes rolled back as he received a live feed from the AA mechs perched atop the building.

[CONTACT ALERT]

His eyes rolled back into focus, displaying a mote of fear.

“EVERYBODY GET DOWN!” He yelled.

The Institute AA guns deployed for the safe house were state of the art, but the incoming objects were travelling at four times the speed of sound from orbit. Even as the tri-field laser guns tore one craft apart, sizable pieces flew straight into the tower block and exploded with an intensity that shook even the surrounding structures.

The Cradle

“Orbital strikes? What, how…” Masgard started, standing up again before flinching as a deafening sound filled the room. One in-atmosphere fighter craft screamed out of the darkness and past the skyscraper, then another. The plate glass windows rattled with the increase in air pressure, and the lights flickered. “What’s going on?” one of the Outreman science team asked from the doorway, voice quivering.

“Pack your shit, put it on the drones. Let's go! Get a move on!” An institute soldier barked from out in the corridor.

---

“Please, help me understand.” Freyr pleaded, suddenly finding her voice.

“I can help you. People will listen to me, but I need to know why we’re here.” Her eyes never left the mirror image of her family.

“We’ve met before, Human - but you won’t remember. Your form has changed, but you’re close enough for me to recognise your spark in the fire of a trillion Human minds. It is no accident, you arriving in Outremer. The Rothian too, had a part to play in our downfall.”

A shiver ran up Freyr’s spine, and the voice resumed practically inside her ear.

“You’re both here so it never happens again.”

With that, something grabbed the back of Freyr’s neck and pushed her face deep into the placid waters. Freyr struggled, but couldn’t get free - bubbles escaped from her mouth and nose. She opened her eyes, and almost screamed the rest of her air supply out. Directly opposite her, as if she were under the water looking up and he was face down in it, was Vreta’Sori. Freyr’s eyes bulged, and she tried to move from side to side to attract his attention from a few metres away.

---

Freyr began making strangled gasps for breath on the floor of her room. One fist clenched, then the other.
“Subject is experiencing ventricular fibrillation. Cardiac arrest is imminent.” The medical drones announced.

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar growled softly over comms when her plan was disregarded, but moved off with the rest of the team nonetheless.

With the storm front rumbling over the mountain peaks behind them, Aegis team fanned out to surround the gun platform. Tar’s clawed boots scraped lightly over the uneven granite rocks as she carried on along the western ridge, passing the others as they got situated. It was impossible to be totally quiet, but it didn’t matter anyway. Almost all noise the team made was completely subsumed by the hammering rain, wind and thunder.

There wasn’t much cover on the outcropping furthest from where they’d emerged from the caves. So Tar just lay prone at the edge with her Carbine barrel wedged into a groove that let her peer down onto the platform below. Water whipping across the rocks found its way inside her armour and pooled around her abdomen. Lightning flashed in the thick clouds behind the massive cannon, which sprouted up from the platform below to tower over them.

She watched through her scope as sheets of rain alternately obscured and revealed frozen Unggoy sentries. The wait seemed to go on forever. Then came a verbal confirmation from Grikgar, another wait, then the explosion.

It married perfectly with a thunderous boom rolling over the western peaks. A gout of blue-green flame erupted from one of the supports, licking the cliffside underneath where most of Aegis was hidden. The ground shook, and a hideous note of rending metal carried on the wind.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the platform started to tilt. A startled Unggoy lost balance and began sliding towards the cliffs. Suddenly, a jagged bolt of lightning flickered down the side of the cannon snout, lighting the whole scene. “Hit.” Tar confirmed from her angle, turning her attention to the nearest structure sat atop the listing platform.

The Cradle

595’s vision gradually blurred and Freyr uncoupled from it. The darkness around her felt comfortable this time. She knelt motionless in a shallow pool of placid water. A faint light shone on it from above, or was it from underneath? She could see herself in the reflection, younger and fresh faced, smiling. After a couple of moments, a man appeared next to her doppleganger. His face was blurry to begin with, but eventually Freyr understood who it was - David! And he was holding her baby!

She opened her mouth to shout out, and her hands moved under the water. The reflection rippled, and another voice echoed in the dark. It sounded like leaves rustling in the wind. “Ah, ah, ah! Don’t move.” The family in the reflection looked around, startled, scared. A cadenced clicking sound moved from behind Freyr’s left ear to her right. “Such a happy family. So united, so…agreeable.”

---

“Enhanced levels of noradrenaline detected, key memory and emotional neural structures active.” One of the drones fed back to the Rothian doctor in charge. “Subject’s heart rate is outside of previously tracked threshold and rising.”

Masgard Xandrus pushed through the crowd at the door to see what was happening. He’d evidently been asleep, as his formal shirt hadn’t been buttoned up fully. “What happened? Why is she on the floor, and…all wet? Masgard moved forward, squeezing past one of the drones to kneel down at her side. “Doctor Lang? Can you hear me? Do you want us to put you on the bed?”

---

“Not all Humans are as agreeable. Too individualistic, greedy. They won’t assimilate well, when I’m all that guards the Cradle. You must bring the others back to me, before it's too late. I…lose…patience…”

The Cradle

Wallace heard Nirann clanking over as they were navigating through the tight knots of chatting locals now inhabiting her office. “Of course. Let's get inside.”

Once they were all standing on the transparent floor (or was it a wall?) of the ship, its consistency changed to suck just their party quickly inside. After a moment, the sounds of the concert faded, they were deposited back into the antechamber from which they’d entered Wallace’s office in the first place.

Skopec, left trapped there for an hour or more, came over. He was quiet now, but when he saw Freyr’s condition he gave Wallace a look of pure contempt. “Get her to the med bay, and plot a course back to their safehouse.” The Plenipotentiary commanded her servants, ignoring the Institute officer. “Hardly safe now. Everyone in this fucking city saw you. Didn’t they? Where the hell did you go?” Skopec snarled.

The dance floor which had appeared out of the lake for this impromptu 21st century post-hardcore gig disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Soundlessly, it sank beneath the lapping waves, leaving concert-goers to flounder aimlessly around in the oxygen-rich water.

---

They arrived back at the top of their high tower to discover a much larger delegation of Institute personnel waiting for them. This time they had a high ranking government official with a formal grounding notice for Wallace. They detained the whole crew, despite the Plenipotentiary’s strongest protestations, and moved them off the ship and into an empty office area.

A few hours later, early in the morning, a state of emergency was declared in Réunion and multiple other large cities across Outremer. A no-fly zone was enacted for all civilian craft and military checkpoints sprung up to control the flow of people entering and leaving key areas.