[Crossover Fanfiction] The Past Awakens

[Urist]

Author's Note:
Hi everyone! I've written this story over the last ~4 months, and I'm going to be posting it over the next few weeks. There's 19 chapters, and I'm aiming to post one every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

Now, to get a few things out of the way:
1) It's a crossover, and you'll probably figure out just *what* other setting is being mixed with Outsider by the last line of Chapter One.
2) I'd gotten more than half of the story written by the time I came across a forum post by Arioch noting that sanzai doesn't really convey *more* information than verbal speech, but rather just does it much faster. That's not how I had thought it worked, and so sanzai in this story is a bit more broad-band in terms of what it can communicate. Let's call it an additional AU element; the Soia tinkered a little bit more with their mental upgrades for the Loroi.



Chapter One: The Artifact
<Jumping in four solon. Four… three… two… one… engaged.>

Tempest surged forwards, leaping across the vast gulf between stars in less time than it took to blink. Torrai Lashret Stillstorm felt only the familiar twinge in the corner of her mind, where a lesser species would have been crippled for hundreds of solon by such a long-distance jump.

Yet more proof of the superiority of the Soia-Liron species, another marker of their destiny — their duty — to once more stand as hegemon over the known galaxy, as their foremothers did before.

A duty which now led Stillstorm and her fleet to this journey far beyond the borders of the Union. To where no Loroi had gone before… at least, not since the days of the Soia.

A sub-verbal flicker of thought from her tactical officer confirmed that the star system was empty of contacts besides the rest of Strikeforce-51. Four planets orbited a single brown dwarf star; no moons, no significant asteroid presence. The innermost planet was inside the habitable zone, although its atmospheric oxygen content was slightly too low for comfort, but that could be fixed with—

Stillstorm blocked off the rest of the Listel Tozet’s analysis. The girl was a capable enough officer — more than most, or Stillstorm would have rotated her out of SF-51 long ago — but her youth showed clearly in her over-eagerness for discovery and analysis. A welcome trait when applied to finding new and better ways to kill Shells, but… ‘tiring’ when her focus strayed to lesser topics.

To distract her mind from the usual post-jump flurry of sanzai chatter — both verbal and sub-verbal — that flashed around the bridge, the Lashret let her eyes play across the displayed icons of the rest of the ships in her formation, allowing the familiar glow of anger to rise as she counted how few remained.

To think that it had been only a short while ago that SF-51 had been comfortably ensconced in the routine duties of patrolling the Charred Steppes. As “routine” as any combat duty could be in this war, at least. Until the Shells rammed their Great Offensive straight through the front lines, ships by the thousands pouring in… and the first wave entirely invisible to the Farseers. SF-51 had been among the first to feel the bite of the Enemy’s new trick, barely surviving an ambush which cost them the entirety of two sister Strike Forces. An ambush carried out by ships which they could not see — not properly, at least, and only with their shipboard sensors.

And yet for all the time SF-51 had spent sifting through the Shell wreckage left after that battle, they had found nothing. Not the slightest hint of how the Enemy had pulled off such a coup, had blinded the Union’s most important advantage.

Or rather, their second-most important advantage. The nature of the Loroi as the Soia’s true inheritors was their greatest aid, the one that would see this war brought — eventually — to the correct conclusion. That had been shown well enough by the fierce fighting withdrawal of the Tinza sector fleet ahead of the Enemy offensive, harrying the Shells’ vanguard even as the vengeful Strikeforce-51 cut at their rearguard.

The Loroi had not been able to stop the Khalkha divisions cold, not at the border. But for fifteen jumps after Leido, every system now bore a hazy field of wreckage tumbling forever in the cold starlight. Umiak warships cut asunder, melted, burned by the dozens. Hundreds.

Thousands.

But they had not died alone.

Five colonies — seventy million Union lives, mostly Neridi — had lain in the path of the attack. Three of those worlds would not see life again for decades, now… and only half a million of their former inhabitants still drew breath.

The Shells had gambled on a thrust deep into the heart of the Union, and had failed in that objective. But they had taken far too much with them down into the depths. Not quite as bad as the vile slaughter that the Enemy had inflicted in the first few years of the war, but every loroi in the Strikeforce felt the same burning anger at those losses.

The Shells would pay for their latest transgression; this over-confident offensive would be their undoing, spending what must have been the work of years of reserves and yet failing to inflict a mortal blow to the Union.

Yet the greatest error of the Enemy had been found only once the clean-up operation began.

A spinning chunk of wreckage had drifted through space, misshapen, half-melted, massive rents torn in its hull by blaster fire. Only a truly observant analyst could have identified it as the aft main hull of a Shell superheavy.

But Tempest had just such an analyst.

And while the Farseer could detect no life aboard the shattered hulk, Tempest’s thermal sensors showed that life yet drew breath within it.
Stillstorm knew just the people who were most eager to change that.

The wreck’s reactor had been opened to space by its destruction, and the ship-killing munitions that it had carried had long since been hurled futilely against the vengeful Loroi armada. The Umiak crew aboard had no method left at hand to scuttle their stricken craft, for all that they fought hard against the boarding team.

It earned a few of them a quick death at the hands of soroin blaster fire or teidar telekinesis.

Those were the lucky ones.

Mizol interrogators worked alongside gallen cyber-specialists to plumb the depths of what knowledge could be gleaned from the ship, stored aboard minds both organic and technological. The agonized last gasps of minds and machines had yielded… a map.

One which led deep into the Barren Wastes.

Past system after system pockmarked with ruined, cratered worlds dating far back into prehistory. Whatever had once been there, the Soia had seen fit to remove.

With great prejudice.

Leaving no traces of technology or settlement, no artifacts or faintest traces of habitation.

Yet somewhere out there, the Umiak had found… the Device.

It sat now in one of Tempest’s fighter maintenance bays, adjacent to the hangar. They… didn’t need as much space for small-craft, anymore. Which left plenty of space to give the backpack-sized ancient artifact a wide berth.

The gallen promised anyone who would receive that the Device had no effect when unpowered. That once it had been removed from the well-hidden compartment aboard the Umiak superheavy, unplugged from the nest of wires and cables that had powered it, it was merely an inert pile of machinery, no danger to anyone.

But still it… unnerved everyone.

It had to be a Soia artifact — who else could have constructed a psionic ‘cloak’? — but why it had been forged by those ancient foremothers was anyone’s guess. Unless the Soia had been no more immune to infighting than their fallen Loroi descendants, why build a machine that seemed to hold no other purpose than to shield any person — even aliens! — around it from one of the greatest advantages the Soia had bequeathed to the Loroi?

The metal-lined straps that sat on one side of the heavy Device gave a strong hint as to its intent: it was sized to be carried by a loroi. A rather strong loroi, yes, and one of large build, but there could be no doubt. The Device, a machine which completely hid any being within hundreds of paces from the mind of a loroi, had been meant to be carried by one of the same people who stood to lose the most from its use.

Stillstorm herself had marched down to the bay, had held one hand against the smooth, aged metal. Trying to imagine what sort of mind, what sort of person had once carried it, so long ago. It was cold to the touch, and she had told herself that that was the only reason why her palm had tingled.
Had had to repeat that private thought twice before it stuck fast.

And so even she overlooked the few… lapses in discipline among the guards posted to watch the bay. Even when Tempest’s own Chief of Security had had to discipline a junior teidar loathe to stand watch in the same room as the Device, Stillstorm had kept her thoughts to herself.

These girls had fought hard against the Shell offensive, and suffered through the grinding crucible of the Barren Steppes before that. They had earned a lighter touch than she might otherwise have shown them.

The red dwarf’s gravity well was predictably small, and so it was only a few thousand solon later that Strikeforce-51 lined up on their jump vector to the next system. The one that had been specially marked in the Shell computers and carefully guarded in Shell minds.

But not carefully enough to keep its location from the prying thoughts of a seasoned Mizol.

The system that doubtlessly would see yet another pitched battle against the hated Enemy, if it was truly the source of their lotai-machines. The Shells would fight dearly to guard their find, that much she knew to expect. But only a few jumps behind Strikeforce-51 was a line fleet formation, the survivors of Tinza’s reserve forces and sector fleet. Bloodied and thinned by the desperate battles against the Lotai Offensive, yes, but now eager to seek out vengeance against those who had slain so many of their sisters-in-arms. And with the arrival of the Emperor’s own Guard Squadrons at Tinza, they were now freed to sate their bloodlust.

One could criticize many things about the Mizol Emperor — Stillstorm had done so repeatedly and publicly — but her willingness to put her own flagship on the line was not one of them. Especially in light of the demise of Greywind’s predecessor, which had so panicked the Diadem Council that they put a Spy on an Admiral’s throne!

Stillstorm grimaced at the thought, her jaw muscles tightening. Only the thought of imminent action against the Enemy helped lighten her mood. She met the gaze of Tempest’s Herald, who nodded in understanding even before Stillstorm could send her instructions.

Herald Forest turned her head towards the bridge’s audio recorder and barked aloud “Tempest, at quick for action!”

Stillstorm felt the pulse of excitement race through the crew’s minds, expanding outwards from the bridge. She was no mizol herself — for which she was eternally grateful — but long experience with her picked crew had made her able to feel the threads of their surface thoughts as easily as she felt her own pulse racing through her ears.

Resolute soroin stood by their guns, running through last-minute checklists long since memorized.

Gallen deep in the engine compartments felt the pulse of their ship, as Tempest himself readied for battle.

Doranzer checked over their medicines and tools, steeling their minds for bloody work.

The few teidar aboard varied widely, from the smoldering bloodlust of the Teidar Pallan currently on Tempest’s own bridge to her much junior caste-sister posted outside of the bridge entrance, whose thoughts kept returning to the last male she had encountered.

Ah, to be young again.

While further aft, the Tenoin were… arguing.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

<I can still fly! And better than any of these… children!> Spiral’s message echoed through Talon’s mind. The Tenoin Arrir didn’t let her diral-sister distract her from connecting the hoses of her cockpit up to her flight suit. Especially not now, when Talon had to mentally supervise the younger pilot who would be taking Spiral’s normal place flying at her side.

<Tenoin Narrat Ronzasonel is an adequate pilot.> Talon sent back to Spiral. And it was true that of all of Tempest’s new replacement pilots, Redmantle was the most promising. It was a pity that this would be her first combat flight, but with none of the other pilots having any more experience, Talon wanted the most promising on her wing. And with Spiral’s injury still unhealed…

Some part of Talon’s thoughts must have leaked through the sanzai link, because the Maia-born tenoin indignantly sent <I don’t need depth perception to fly! Everything is either at my fingertips or too far away to see with just eyes anyways!>

She wasn’t wrong, and Talon carefully shielded the real reason why her diral-sister was stuck watching from the observation deck at the side of the hangar rather than climbing into one of the two interceptors left aboard Tempest. After all, if this battle was as fierce as Talon feared it may be, the squadron needed someone with experience left to lead the bare-headed children they had been sent as replacements.

Sorry, sister, but that knife you wear might not be enough to save you from becoming the last of our diral.

The cockpit hissed closed, and she felt the rising cold as Talon’s suit began to fill with oxygen-rich breathing liquid. Even after all this time, she still hated this part.

The irony of the tenoin — trained on Taben where all knew well the risks and dangers of drowning! — being the ones who had to let water fill their lungs always stuck with her. Her gut was convinced that she was drowning, in those few heartbeats of instinctual panic before her body accepted that it could still breathe the water.

With long experience, she kept the brief spike of alarm from leaking out through her sanzai.

And chose to ignore the sub-verbal yelp which came from the cockpit of the fighter still held in its cradle next to hers. The girl would get used to it, in time.

If she survived long enough.

While her fingers danced across the controls, running through pre-flight lists, Talon sent to Spiral <I know. But Redmantle needs experience more than you need another kill-marker.>

The voice of Tempest’s hangar coordinator came in through the headset. “Blade One, Blade Two, radio check.”

Talon keyed her mic and responded, voice distorted and deepened by the liquid filling her lungs. “Blade One, ready for launch. All systems prepared, six missiles loaded and ready.”

What she wouldn’t give to return to the days when she carried torpedoes and hunted warships, not this glorified point-defense mission.

After a moment, Redmantle added in slightly-broken spoken Trade “Blade Two, all is ready. All machines are being ready, also six missiles.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Talon’s mouth. She sent to Spiral <Watch out, her vocal Trade is already as good as yours!> along with a sub-verbal laugh.

<Tail-wag!> Spiral sent back with a mental smile, adding the sensation of pinching Talon’s ear. The two shared a few seconds of warm camaraderie, before Spiral rapidly sobered. With a sanzai link so intense that Talon could see her diral-sister’s face in her mind, complete with the patch covering her missing left eye, Spiral sent <Just… be careful. Please.>

“Sixteen solon until jump.” the hangar coordinator announced. “Prepare for launch in twenty solon.”

Stillstorm was playing it cautious, then. Getting her fighter screen — what was left of it — deployed as soon as they arrived.

Smart move.

Talon turned her helmet to the side, looking across the hangar to the observation deck even as the launch-shutters closed. She met Spiral’s eyes — well, eye — and nodded.

<I will.>

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Jump in four… three… two...” the helmswoman intoned aloud “one… engaged.”

Stillstorm surreptitiously licked at dry lips as her eyes bored holes into the tactical display. The screen stayed blank for several solon after the Strikeforce blinked into their new system, as Tempest’s sensor network combined their inputs into a cohesive view.

All at once, a sea of hostile-blue markers flooded into the display.

Tempest’s sensor officer blurted out over sanzai <Multiple Enemy contacts! Hundreds of— no, thousands!> The Listel Tozet’s alarm was palpable, but to the girl’s credit she wrestled it under control in a heartbeat and returned to spoken speech. “Nearest group, thirty-three vessels. Eight light-solon ahead of us, time to weapons range ninety solon.”

Strikeforce-51 had emerged right on top of a Shell force. Although that wasn’t difficult, given just how the Enemy swarmed throughout the system.

“Vessel classifications?” Stillstorm asked.

“Of the nearest group, readings indicate twenty-six transport vessels and seven escorts. Escort consists of one Type-Kh light cruiser and six Type-H destroyers.”

Stillstorm frowned. That wasn’t an unusually heavy escort… for convoys near the battle lines. But this system was far behind the front. She eyed the tactical display, which flagged more and more of the Shell contacts in the system as warships. And not all small vessels, either.

Why was the Enemy spending so many ships on patrolling a system this far from the actual war?

“Alert, Fifty-one!” called out the red-armored Torret who commanded the vanguard squadron. Her performance during the long-running Battles of Tinza had earned her a transfer to the Torrai caste, but there had not been time to formalize her promotion to Mazeit rank. Stillstorm was always glad when those officers who had proven their talent were moved to a position to continue their career’s upward trajectory… even if it meant that Nova would inevitably be transferred out of Strikeforce-51 all the sooner. “Eyes on sensor trace at position bishires-four-three. Winter Tide has readings on an unknown structure, and the Enemy are heavily concentrated around it.”

Stillstorm flicked a thought at her sensor officer, and the overhead display obligingly shifted to show the image of the contact in question, a composite view generated by the sensors of the entire Strikeforce working together.

The Torrai Lashret nodded to herself. She knew an intact Soia artifact when she saw one, for all that none had yet been found of such scale. That object could only be the reason the Shells swarmed all over this system, and why they guarded it so heavily.

Indeed, she allowed her own feelings to flow into the waves of shock that echoed around the bridge, as battle-seasoned loroi stared at the image projected on the display walls.

Against the backdrop of a swirling orange gas giant, there floated a colossal structure. Nearly thirteen-thousand mannal across.

A Ring.

[Snoofman]

"Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness for mother's sins passed to her daughter."

Intriguing crossover. Show us more!

[Urist]

Author's note in spoiler-box to make things neater:

SpoilerShow

I'm not quite happy with the time-skip here, jumping over some action and describing it in past-tense. But Halo:CE doesn't give the player much of a view of the outside combat, and you mostly see it via Cortana's narration(/boasting) once you arrive at the bridge. And even then, there's the boarding action to keep you distracted. None of that quite fit for this scene, so have a grumpy Stillstorm angrily evacuating yet *another* ship shot out from underneath her.

Stillstorm swept her gaze across the empty bridge, even as Tempest shuddered once more underfoot at yet another weapon impact. It had been worth it, she repeated to herself. It must be worth it.

Maybe if she repeated it enough, she’d actually believe it.

<The next-to-last-wave of shuttles has left, Lashret.> sent the only other person left on the bridge. The pain in Tenoin Seinen Forest’s mind was palpable, as they prepared to evacuate the stricken vessel. <They will return in three hundred solon, for the last of us.>

One final glance at the flickering tactical display glimpsed the squadron clustered around Tempest as he drifted along, the Ring looming ever-larger ahead. Stillstorm clenched her jaw so tightly that her teach creaked. It had been worth it.

It must have been worth it.

She turned and followed the Seinen out of the bridge. <Have all copies of the data gathered been distributed?>

<Yes, Lashret. All squadrons of the strikeforce have it, and two of our Listel Tozet have been sent to other vessels.>

Good. That meant that come what may, the Shells would struggle to prevent at least someone getting this information back to the Tinza Sector fleet following in 51’s wake.

Her squadron’s losses would be avenged.

She could still see in her mind’s eye how the Strikeforce had blitzed its way deep in-system, scattering Enemy transports ahead of them like nimai fleeing a hunter’s pursuit. Had burned hard for the Ring, sensors eager to gather what data they could about this unprecedented Soia find. Had expected stiff resistance from the enemy battle squadrons that also closed on the Ring, yes, but had known that they could fight their way past.

Had not expected the Ring itself to fire on them.

The energy weapon — some exotic form of particle beam, the deathly-pale sensor officer had announced — had leapt up from the Ring’s surface, fired at a range of three light-solon. Had bisected the destroyer Swift River in a heartbeat. Even as the squadron hurriedly began evasive maneuvers, it fired again. Burning the cruiser Thunderflash to a melted wreck.

And then it was Tempest’s turn.

The larger warship had not been destroyed outright, but he had been reduced to a crippled wreck that would never fight again. Even if Tempest could somehow have been returned to a shipyard, he was far too damaged to be worth repairing.

But the Shell forces now closing on Strikeforce-51 weren’t going to give them even that slim chance.

The two senior officers passed the Teidar guarding the bridge entrance, and the red-haired loroi fell into step behind them. With one last — almost apologetic — glance at the mural of Tempest’s namesake, Stillstorm left her stricken command behind for the last time. Her eyes burned, but no tears came.

If there was any consolation to be found, here, it was that the enemy weapon had not fired again after Tempest’s destruction. Perhaps whatever the Shells had done to get the ancient Soia weapon — for what else could something of such power be? — operational again after eons of disuse had failed.

But to Stillstorm, it felt personal.

As if the hated Shells had been satisfied by once more cutting a ship apart underneath her very feet. Had intended from the start to strike at her personally. And to make it worse, they hadn’t hit Stillstorm herself, not directly.

She was unharmed… at least physically.

Instead she had felt the mind-signatures of hundreds of her crew, the sisters-in-arms that had fought under her command for so many battles, blink out in a heartbeat. Never to be heard again. Yet she herself, safe deep in the bridge, remained untouched.

The procession stalked aft towards the hangar. Stillstorm’s mood soured with every dried blue smear against the bulkheads, every bloody reminder of how the wounded had overfilled the medbays. How hard-eyed doranzer had rushed between patients, sorting those who could live from those who were beyond helping.

Those latter ones had been left aboard, placed in the reactor compartments and warhead storage compartments. They would join Tempest in his final attack: a fitting, fiery sendoff for warriors who had so well earned it.

And the ship they rode in on, too.

The last evacuation craft entered the hangar just as Stillstorm and her group passed the observation windows. Her own Highland shuttle, pressed into service to evacuate the survivors. And a one-eyed pilot at the controls.

Stillstorm shook her head. Things had gone so wrong so quickly, but at least Strikeforce-51 would get their close look at the Ring, whatever it was. Would burn hard to leave the system, to get word back to the heavy fleet which would avenge their losses. It was worth it. It had to be worth it.

And Tempest still had a last part to play in that.

The ship’s reactors had been scrammed to prevent a premature explosion, his engines cooling for the final time. But his reaction thrusters still worked, and his navigation computer was up to the task. The mighty ship, cut, burned and crippled, slowly lined up a collision course with the Ring.

A very specific spot on the Ring.

After all, the bright energy lance that had crippled Tempest had also given away its exact position, on the strangely-habitable inside surface of the Soia structure. Even if the Shells got their weapon back online in the little time they had left, they would be forced to waste shots on the closing vessel lest their find be destroyed by the impact. Which would let the rest of Strikeforce-51 race through the inside of the Ring, sensors eating away at whatever secrets may be seen from such point-blank proximity.

The shuttle airlock hissed shut behind her, and Stillstorm left her junior officers behind and entered the cockpit. She didn’t even need to send anything to the Tenoin who sat at the navigation console for the girl to yield her seat.

It had been many years since the last time that a much-younger Arrir Stillstorm had manned such a post, but her fingers danced across the console with as much speed as ever. And it was her own voice that ordered levelly “Pilot, depart.”

It was oh-so-much easier to keep the pain out of her spoken voice than with sanzai.

The shuttle nosed out of the hangar, its pilot still following procedure even though there was no reason anymore not to scorch the hangar with the blazing-hot engine exhaust. No final indignity for the ship that had carried them through so many battles.

Even if in just under eighty solon, none of it would matter anymore to Tempest.

An alarm blared from the console.

The pilot warned loudly <Energy weapon impact on the front of the ship! It’s pushing him back after us!> Her hand grasped at the throttle, dumping power to the engines.

Engines that could not react quite instantly to such a command.

The shuttle impacted 'back' against the hull of Tempest with bone-jarring force. A pained mental yelp came from the rear compartment, as the crewwoman whose seat Stillstorm had taken was hurled from her seat before she could buckle in. More alarms flared across the screen as the shuttle reported damage.

And then the engines kicked in.

Or rather, the single remaining engine.

The shuttle leapt away, whirling on its axis as the off-center thrust spun it like a log caught in a whirlpool. The inertial dampeners did what they could, but enough force bled through to slam the passengers aside against their creaking seat restraints.

The pilot struggled to force her hand against the acceleration, fingers crawling along her console before finally snagging on the throttle. Yanking it back to neutral.

“—hland Seven, what is your status? Can you maneuver?” asked the voice over the radio, from the frigate that had stood by to receive the shuttle flight. “This is Argent Spear, our hangar is cleared and ready for an emergency landing!”

But one glance at the damage reports in front of her was enough for Stillstorm. Couple that with the trajectory of the drifting shuttle, one that they could no longer change. There would not be enough time for the frigate to chase down the tumbling shuttle and retrieve it.

Which left her only one option. Only one command that she could give.

“Break off, Argent Spear.” ordered Stillstorm. “Main thrusters are offline, we cannot maneuver. We are riding this fish down into the deeps. Inform Mazeit Moonglow that command of Strikeforce-51 is now her responsibility.” She took a deep breath, not for her own sake but rather for those others on the shuttle with her. Yet her duty was clear. “Attempt no recovery. Continue the mission.”

There was no way that any vessel from Strikeforce-51 could slow enough to recover any survivors from the Ring’s surface, not without being overwhelmed by the Shells closing on their position.

If there even were going to be any survivors, of course.

That was now Stillstorm’s sole remaining duty. It was a strangely... 'freeing' sensation, as if a literal weight of command had been lifted from her weary shoulders.

Stillstorm sent to the pilot <Can you maneuver this craft in atmosphere?>

<Affirmative, Lashret.> the pilot sent back confidently, catching on to her train of thought immediately. The shallow angle of Tempest’s approach to the Ring could let the shuttle follow the drifting hulk in, shielding it from the burn of 're-entry.'

Stillstorm’s hands danced over the console, redirecting power and adjusting the inertial dampeners.

And overriding safety limiters.

<Do it.> she sent.

With less than eight solon until impact, the shuttle’s remaining engine once more blazed brightly. With the thrust-directors canted as far off to one side as they could manage, the shuttle merely yawed rather than spun, leaping away from Tempest’s hull even as the first flickers of red flames began their dance around the perimeter of the crashing ship.

Everything happened between eyeblinks.

Debris slammed against the shuttle, rattling all aboard.

Tempest rocked under a last-solon energy blast, veering aside just a hair’s breadth.

Pain-panicked sendings from the injured girl in the back were quieted by the steely assurances of a veteran Teidar.

The pilot flared her engine and overloaded the maneuvering thrusters, nudging the shuttle’s nose up just as the terrain rushed up from below.

For the tiniest fraction of a moment, torn tree branches could be seen streaking past the cockpit windows, and then—

Impact.

Blackness.

[Hālian]

;-;7

[Snoofman]

Stillstorm, after waking from the crash and seeing incoming Shell troopers: <I need a weapon!>

I like how you made Loroi refer to their ships as 'the masculine' in contrast to humans referring to their ships in the feminine.

[Urist]

Yup. I figured that they would do so, for pretty much the exact same (but mirrored) reasons that most human cultures refer to ships as feminine.

Anyways, Chapter 3 is going up in a few minutes; it's where the story proper really begins.

[Urist]

SpoilerShow

Author's Note: Okay, this forum's system is *really* starting to annoy me. It ate the last version of this chapter, with all the last-minute minor edits. So now I've re-done all the ones that I can remember, and hopefully it won't fail to upload this time.

Teidar Pallan Fireblade was the first to awaken.

Minimal pain… a good sign. No injuries significant enough to impact her combat readiness.

Her helmet reported breathable atmosphere in the shuttle. Also good.

She glanced down at the Tenoin Narrat held closely in her lap. There had not been time to secure her properly in the last available seat, not before the sudden maneuvers. The girl still breathed, although she remained unconscious. Perhaps a mercy, given the way one knee was bent back the wrong way.

Unbuckling herself from the seat, Fireblade stood and laid the young girl across both vacant spots, careful not to jolt the injured leg. Looking around the cabin, she eyed the passengers aboard. Most of Tempest’s senior officers, who had insisted — in some cases quite forcefully — not to leave their ship until the very last.

Brave and honorable, perhaps, but now it meant that Strikeforce-51 was deprived of far too many experienced officers. And unless a truly improbable amount of luck came their way, none of them would ever return to Union service.

Fireblade directed a mental pulse — as gently as she could manage, which she acknowledged was… not especially gentle — at the doranzer mazil-toza who lay slumped against one wall. The older loroi jolted awake, blinking rapidly. She coughed once before sending back to Fireblade. <Injuries?>

<One known.> the teidar indicated the prone Tenoin. <Rouse the others and check them. I will examine our surroundings.> Fireblade knew well enough that her own methods of ‘waking’ the others would not be as gentle as the doranzer’s finer touch. And besides, it was likely that the Shells would soon arrive to search the debris field left by Tempest’s crash. Better for her to patrol the outside.

She entered the airlock, checking the flickering display as it reported the outside atmosphere. Also breathable, surprisingly enough. But then, what exactly should one expect from a well-preserved Soia artifact?

The inner hatch had only just started to close when a thin loroi form dashed inside through the narrowing gap, joining Fireblade in the small chamber.

Exactly the person she had expected, too.

<Isn’t this exciting!?> sent Beryl, her verbal thoughts burning with emotion. <A Soia habitat, world-sized, and in nearly perfect condition!>

<It is also likely to be crawling with Shells.> noted Fireblade, waiting for the air to be pumped out from the compartment. Even if it was breathable outside, actually exposing any loroi to it would have to wait until the doranzer had tested it and declared it to be safe.

<Then it is a great day for each of us! I will find artifacts to document, and you will find enemies to fight!>

Fireblade let her appreciation for her friend shine through the sanzai link. She had been… doubtful when the bubbly Listel had first been rotated onto Tempest’s crew, replacing the much-older Tozet that had worked from the bridge position next to Fireblade for many battles. But the white-haired girl had soon proven herself not only as a more-than-competent sensor officer, but also as a friendly soul.

And so very, very much a Listel.

<Indeed so.> The airlock hatch opened, and the two loroi each took a step back as a brief wave of dirt fell in alongside the rushing air.

Once the minor avalanche was finished, only a narrow sliver of light shone at the top of the earth-filled hatch to show where the surface lay. A pulse of telekinesis forced open a crude ramp, linking the near-buried shuttle to the ground above. The two of them climbed up, Fireblade adding a few more telekinetic shoves to harden the sides of the ditch. It looked stable to her, now, but she closed the hatch anyways.

They arrived at the surface to find that the shuttle had managed to bury itself stern-first into the base of a rocky cliff and at a nose-up angle, with only the forward half of the cockpit extending above ground.

Around them, a narrow valley was bisected by a thin stream, sparse but tall green tree-like plants growing throughout. Really, if it hadn’t been for the blackened groove carved into the soil by the shuttle’s crash — and the smoldering, leaf-stripped trees near that track — the place would have looked quite beautiful.

<Do you think that this environment was chosen by the Soia to mimic their homeworld?> asked Beryl.

After a moment, Fireblade answered <Possibly. It is similar to some parts of Deinar, and appears to be comfortably habitable for loroi.> While it was unknown exactly where in the galaxy the Soia had came from — except that it was outside of known space — presumably they had chosen each of the Sister Worlds for some reason; resemblance to some aspect of their distant homeworld was a likely candidate.

The Tozet made to take off her helmet, and Fireblade cautioned <Keep your suit sealed. We cannot know for certain that this air is safe and free of micro-organisms.>

<The doranzer will have to pick someone to be the lab-miros to test it eventually, though.> But Beryl followed Fireblade as they walked around the perimeter of the crash site, scanning for any more visible dangers.

There came a loud clang behind them. The cockpit’s emergency exit hatch slammed back against the hull, and a Tenoin Narrat clawed her way up, heaving her body out onto the hull amidst a plume of electrical-device smoke. Sitting upright, she snatched her helmet off and drew in deep, coughing breaths.

Fireblade and Beryl glanced at each other. <Or someone might volunteer herself, it seems.> Beryl sent with a flicker of humor.

The Tenoin stared around with her one eye at the scene surrounding them, before sagging back against the hull. <Not the worst landing I’ve been in, but close!> she sent to anyone that would receive.

To her credit, the growing number of minds that joined the buzzing sanzai network centered on the crashed shuttle showed that all aboard had survived the impact. Several were injured, yes, but alive. Not a bad outcome, under the circumstances.

Which meant that they had a whole fifty loroi… against a planet-sized Soia artifact crawling with who-knew-how-many soldiers of the Hierarchy.

Poor Shells wouldn’t know what hit them.

Stillstorm clambered up after the pilot, looking around the beautiful landscape with a faint scowl. <This is a surprising development. The Soia appear to have spent more effort on decoration than expected.> She turned to Fireblade. <Have you loca—>

The Lashret’s train of thought cut off sharply as a distant sound hit the ears of all the loroi outside the shuttle. Fireblade and Beryl quickly pressed themselves into a nearby tree-bush, while the pilot sprinted over to join them. Stillstorm merely ducked low back into the hatch, eyes scanning the sky.

A few thousand paces above them, a single atmospheric craft flew lazily past.

Umiak.

<It is one of their robotic craft.> sent Fireblade, peering through the branches that hid her — hopefully — from the robotic craft’s sensors. <Atmospheric craft. They must have a significant presence aboard this Ring already, and nearby.>

They tracked the vehicle until it disappeared out of sight, over the lip of the canyon. It could not have possibly missed the half-buried shuttle; but hopefully the Enemy would think that all aboard had perished in the crash. That would buy the loroi perhaps a cycle or so until the Shells sent a patrol to clean up the site.

Time enough to plan their next moves.

Stillstorm sent again <Have you located any signs of Soia structures, something that we can move to? The Enemy will eventually notice this shuttle, and we must evacuate the area before that happens.>

<I have seen no such structures yet, Lashret.> Fireblade sent back. <I will organize search parties from the soroin aboard and explore the surroundings properly.>

<Do so, and search thoroughly. The Soia seem to have a preference for natural formations rather than clearly-artificial ones. We must be vigilant.>

<What about this?> Beryl’s sanzai was muted by distance. Fireblade turned to see that the Listel had left her side, and was now some two hundred paces upstream along the narrow brook, pointing to something hidden by the curve of the valley. <It is not a natural formation!>

The hazy image sent by sanzai certainly confirmed that — a rectangular tunnel, with lights set in at regular intervals.

A tunnel which, as it turned out later once the shuttle survivors evacuated themselves and all the supplies they could carry, simply dumped them out into another valley.

But this one had a very interesting sight right in the middle of it.

<What do you think that is?> asked one of the soroin guards, eyes following the pulse of energy which raced skyward from the tall, metal structure in the valley below.

Her squad leader grumbled <I don’t care if it’s the Soia’s own kick-a-bitch machine or a giant hair-comb.> She indicated the Shell troopers climbing all over it, visible at this distance only as yellow-black smudges. <The Shells want it, which is reason enough not to let them have it!>

<Indeed.> Stillstorm sent. <Fireblade, your lead.>

And so, barely a thousand solon later, Fireblade found herself carefully inching closer to the enemy perimeter. No hardtroops here, only ‘normal’ Shells, carrying supplies out of one of their own shuttles and setting up some sort of prefabricated structure next to the Soia building. An archaeological team, perhaps, not soldiers. It wouldn’t matter.

They would all die just the same.

The cargo ramp on the Shell dropship raised, and its engines flared as the heavy craft lurched skywards, presumably empty.

<Now.> sent Fireblade.

Hidden behind a row of the trees a few paces away, Tempest’s former diplomatic officer raised her gaze towards the shuttle, peering up at the ship.

Its engines cut out, and several hundred tons of metal abruptly stopped being ‘mechanical’ and became ‘ballistic.’

An impressive trick. Fireblade knew that that Tempo had been untruthful all that time ago, when she had claimed to have been a ship-board officer for all her career. Such easy sabotage was the act of an experienced operative, nothing less.

Panicked clacking rose from the umiak encampment, just as Fireblade whirled around her tree and gazed down at the frenzied enemy. Oh, this would be fun!

One Shell, sprinting for its life even as the shadow of the shuttle grew larger, suddenly slammed sideways, bowling over three more and knocking them to the ground. A tree uprooted, falling upon another pair and pinning them. One umiak spun on its four legs, frantically looking left and right before spotting Fireblade and freezing.

Her lip curled. Congratulations, you found me.

The Umiak’s reward came in the form of a blaster bolt lengthwise through its skull, as the Soroin team added their part to the ambush. Five more panicking Shells were cut down by the sudden fusillade.

A gentler end than they merited, as far as Fireblade was concerned.

That left some two dozen Shells still alive by the time their own shuttle slammed down upon them, lending the crash a heartwarming crackling sound as exoskeletons burst under the impact.

Even while the dust still choked the air, the loroi stormed forwards, scanning for any survivors. A handful of laser shots rang out, as twitching umiak were granted a final mercy which they did not deserve.

<Ably done.> commented Stillstorm, striding confidently through the haze and wreckage of the obliterated encampment. She peered up through the thinning dust at the Soia structure, gesturing for the two gallen of their complement to come forwards. <Your thoughts?>

Fireblade tuned out the technical discussion, merely following Stillstorm and the two gallen as they walked up the ramp. Footsteps echoed over ancient metal, reverberating, clacking…

Clacking?

Fireblade hurled herself forwards and spun around the corner.

As soon as she rounded the boundary, the terror-lit mind of a single Shell blazed into view, frantically clacking out a message into what could only be a radio held in its claws.

With a thought, Fireblade crumpled the device and wrenched it aside, relishing in the spike of agony illuminating the Shell’s mind as its fingers snapped. She pinned the creature against the wall and made to twist its neck, both to relieve the alien of its existence and her of the burden of looking at its ugly face… and paused.

She had only felt its presence once she had line-of-sight to the Shell. Behind the Soia metal, it had been… hidden.

Stillstorm rounded the corner behind her at a run. Fireblade rapidly sent <This metal blocks mind-sight. Tell the others to search everywhere near the structure. Every corner, every crevice.>

She felt her commanding officer relaying the warning, but Fireblade did not receive the others’ acknowledgments.

Stillstorm’s mind-signature disappeared for a moment, before reappearing again as she stepped back and forth around the corner. <I see. It had a radio?>

<Affirmative, Lashret.> Fireblade sent, still focusing on keeping the Shell pinned against the wall. <It sent a message. I cannot say to whom.>

The Shell was still clattering away in its clicky-clack mockery of a language, only intensifying as Tempo stepped nimbly past Fireblade. <I thank you for your forbearance, Teidar. This one may have much to tell...>

She laid one hand against the side of the frozen Umiak’s head, and concentrated for several solon. And then heaved a sigh, stepping back and turning away. <Or not.>

Fireblade made to finish off the alien, before realizing that its mind was already blank in death. Hmmph. Well, a dead Shell was a dead Shell, no matter whose hands had had the pleasure of making it so.

Still, she bent one of its mandibles all the way back the wrong direction, just to make a point. <Nothing useful?>

<As we feared: it contacted the shell aircraft controllers who have been patrolling near our shuttle.> Mizol Parat Tempo looked at Fireblade. Past her, to the other end of the valley. <Two of their pilot-less craft will be here within fifty solon. They are gathering a reaction force that will arrive in less than two thousand solon.>

That was… not a lot of time for a team of loroi to make themselves scarce on foot. Perhaps they shouldn’t have destroyed that Shell shuttle, as satisfying as it had been…

Stillstorm sent her orders to the rest of the team, while Fireblade stayed atop the upper floor of the Soia structure, eyes sharp, watching the ridge-tops for movements.

And there it came.

Two umiak drones climbed into view, reacting almost instantly to bank towards the loroi.

Fireblade reached out and hurled one from the sky, only narrowly missing its sister before it slammed into the ground in a fireball. The other let off a railgun round which Fireblade deflected, the projectile echoing off of the Soia metal with a loud clang before disappearing into the distance. As the second drone streaked overhead, she crumpled the rear of the engine thruster shut. The metal held for a brief heartbeat, burning exhaust forced back deep inside the machine.

It exploded mid-air, smoking parts raining down onto the ground below and starting a few small fires.

<Ably handled, Teidar.> Stillstorm approved, before broadcasting <We leave now, and make for the Soia tunnel on the opposite end of the valley. It should shield us from the enemy’s scans, and—>

Fifty pairs of eyes cranked skywards as another booming roar echoed overhead. But this time, it was a much larger craft that soared into view.

A Hydra dropship.

A Loroi craft!

“Hydra-One to any ground survivors: is that you making things hard for the Shells down there? I have a hold full of supplies for those who need it!” a voice called over the emergency radio frequency as the Hydra banked into a tight descent, engines flaring for landing.

Fireblade noted the spikes of emotion radiating from their own shuttle pilot. First shock, then surprise, fading into elation… tinged with worry? “Talon! I was not knowing that fighter-drivers made food-delivering trips, now!”

“You know our motto: ‘Any Mission!’”

The Hydra touched down next to the demolished Umiak encampment, and now Fireblade could finally place that voice. The Tenoin Arrir in charge of Tempest’s fighter wing.

But why was—?

Now that they were all close enough, the conversation shifted to the more comfortable sanzai. Stillstorm sent first. <Pilot. Your presence here?> Her side-channels showed the thrust of her question.

<The rest of the Strikeforce is withdrawing as ordered, Lashret. But they didn’t need all of us to come along with them.> The pilot sent back.

<Us?>

The protective panels on the sides of the Hydra’s troop bays rose upwards, showing a team of eight soroin squeezed in among pallets of supplies, blasters held at the low ready. <Torrai Mazeit Moonglow sent that any Soia Ring that the Shells wanted was enough to dispatch a team to investigate. We are ready to deny the Enemy anything they’ve found here.> Her sanzai was accompanied by a mental image of one large pallet, taking up fully half of the space in the Hydra’s troop bay.

The crate which was stacked high with enough Type-A fuel canisters to make a very appreciable crater.

And on a Hydra shuttle, which could make no more than four gravities of acceleration… this was a one-way mission.

Stillstorm had clearly made the same realization. Pride and anger both lined her sanzai, <And she sent you back here.>

<We volunteered, Lashret.> chorused the dropship pilot and each of the Soroin aboard.

The anger in Stillstorm’s sending faded away into subdued waves of pride that spread throughout the group. <You do the Union proud.> She turned aside, fixing her gaze on the watch-sentry that the Emperor had pinned to her crew. <Mizol Parat, was there any information in that Shell’s mind to indicate where their focus of operations on this Ring may lie?>

<Affirmative.> answered Tempo, as the warriors clambered aboard the Hydra. Between sixty loroi and the cargo, there was barely any room left. Soroin veterans of a dozen battles pressed up against long-eared senior doranzer like children on their diral huddling together for warmth. For her part, Fireblade only found a near-comfortable amount of space by pressing herself up against the Taimat fuel canisters. With a thin, knowing smile, she reached up one hand and caressed the containers of volatile fuel like one would a treasured male.

The others backed up and gave her room.

In the small vessel, Fireblade could still clearly receive the conversation even as it moved to the cockpit. Tempo continued <That Shell was a common laborer, uninformed as to their larger goal and operations. However, it was aware that their main base is located some distance from us. Centered around a Soia 'Weapons Platform' or perhaps 'Weapons Cache.' No more than three thousand solon at this dropship’s full acceleration. But with how many warships must certainly now be crowded around this Ring...>

The pilot added <There were at two whole divisions just within eight light-solon of this artifact when I slipped in. I pulsed the engines and drifted in so they did not see us, but a powered flight too far above the terrain now would make us too visible. However, the Soia have left us a great gift in this broken, steep-valleys-and-cliffs terrain that they seem to love so much. We can fly at low altitude, and be lost to sensors in the background clutter.>

<Very well.> Stillstorm sent. <You two work together to get us towards their center of operation.>

After a brief private conversation, the Tenoin Arrir sent again with great amusement <That will not be so hard to find, I think. It is right next to where Tempest went smack right into the landscape. There was so much smoke rising from fires, we can probably see it by eyes in no more than a few hundred solon.>

<Was Tempest destroyed by the impact?> Stillstorm asked.

<Not entirely, Lashret. That Shell weapon kept firing right up to the last solon, blasting his front to vapor. It slowed the ship and pushed him aside; the rear of the ship was still recognizable to my sensors when I drifted past.>

<Then we may yet give Tempest his complete send-off and cripple the Shell operation here.> Stillstorm sent, indicating the fuel canisters that Fireblade leaned against.

The Teidar nodded her agreement. That was a fitting objective. With the main fleet still many days away and the Enemy so numerous in this system, there was no way that any of Tempest’s survivors here would live long. All that remained was to do as much damage as possible to the Shells.

There was a muted sanzai wave of concern as the other loroi came to the same realization, but it was buried underneath the heartening rush of determination that swept through the assembled warriors.

They were Loroi. They were the inheritors of the Soia, standing now with their own two feet atop an artifact of the Soia. One currently defiled by the Enemy’s tread upon its ancient soil.

They would honor their ancestors’ creation with a fitting tribute of victory.

And explosive annihilation.

[Snoofman]

"I admit great curiosity about these visitors. These Loroi and Umiak. While the plan is quite clear about the procedure of this situation, I have my doubts. How many failure points can the plan sustain before blind adherence becomes counterproductive? Surely in light of all that has changed, I should be able to modify my responses to adapt- No. I have duties, and I have a terrible cargo here. I must be sure. I shall obey and content myself to monitor these Umiak and Loroi. So many questions to ask! So many questions!"

[Urist]

<That is it?> Stillstorm asked.

<Affirmative, Lashret.> replied Tempo, crowded next to her in the narrow cockpit and looking out of the same window. <It is the structure that the Shell laborer had known, in this same swamp.>

<The Enemy seems to have… withdrawn from the area. Have they completed their searches in this zone?>

Talon tried to keep the sendings of the two senior officers at her shoulder out of her mind, and concentrate on her flying. She could fly a dropship, yes — that was how she’d talked the Torret of that transport into letting her be the one to fly the dropship, rather than one of the more-specialized pilots — but it was not something at which she had had much practice.

She did have enough left-over attention to have kept one eye on her infrared sensors, however. She indicated them in a brief sending, quiet enough that only the two others in the cockpit should notice.

After all, the rest of the loroi in the back might feel… disappointed if they realized that all of the Shells they had come here to hunt may already be dead.

<Good observation, pilot.> said Stillstorm. <Those wrecked shuttles are still warm. Destroyed by the blast from Tempest’s impact?>

It was the most likely cause. The Umiak craft were scattered around a hundred craters blasted into the jungle and swamp surrounding the squat Soia structure, half-hidden in the thickening evening fog which swirled around the marshy terrain.

Tempo sent, <The heat-decay does support that timeline. At the same time, this...> her message faded off, a brief note of worry glimpsed at the end before the Mizol’s trained lotai clamped it shut.

<You wonder why the Enemy has not yet returned to the area.> observed Stillstorm. <It may be wisdom on their part — they have no way of knowing if Tempest’s reactors were likely to detonate, even now well after his crash-landing.>

<That is quite possible, Lashret.> agreed the Parat, as Talon flared the engines and prepared to land.

<Their cowardice will be our fortune. This Soia facility was clearly the focus of their efforts, and may even be responsible for both their lotai device and this energy beam. If the Shells have uncovered some sort of Soia weapons cache, we will search it before they return. If possible, we will extract it. If not...>

<Boom.> slipped out of Talon’s mind, before she could stop it.

<Indeed so, pilot.> sent the Lashret, sharp amusement curling around her message.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If Talon had known how much slogging through this mud sucked, she might have suggested another plan.

Instead, she found herself trailing behind the soroin footsoldiers who led the vanguard of their little group, forcing their way through the clutching muck of the marsh towards the broad-but-short Soia building.

Also, while the area had looked desolate enough from above, down here where the mist curled around the trees it was downright… eerie. Trees whose branches were tall enough to be hidden in the fog still cast dim shadows which reached down to dance around the limits of the team’s vision.

From the occasional burst of alarm sent by some of the other warriors, Talon knew she wasn’t the only one who kept seeing ghost-Shells out of the corner of her eye, shades which disappeared as soon as her head snapped around to focus on them.

<Another two hundred paces, no more.> sent Stillstorm, somehow without even the faintest trace of worry coloring her thought. Her sanzai was as confident as ever, the tall Torrai striding ahead of the warriors as if the mud was too afraid to get in her way.

At least the same trees, mist and mud which made this such a great experience would also serve to hide the dropship from any Enemy who came to belatedly resume their exploitation of this Soia structure. Talon had halfheartedly considered volunteering to stay behind, ready with a trigger and a dead-woman’s-switch on the Type-A fuel in case the Shells still did find the loroi’s only mode of transportation.

But the desire to actually see with her own two eyes the wonders that the Soia must have left behind inside the building had won out in the end. So the dropship’s own systems were rigged to detonate at any unauthorized entry, and Talon herself got to play foot-soldier.

The loroi spread out as they entered the facility, weapons at the ready. Umiak cargo containers lay scattered around the large bay, dented and scorched.

<Looks like the Shells got splashed by Tempest’s landing!> crowed one soroin, sweeping across the crumpled remains of several Umiak pressed into the back corner.

Another added <A bunch more of them over here, shrapnel wounds and burn marks. It seems they were too stupid to duck!>

<Hold the chatter.> sent Stillstorm, stepping up to a portal in the wall to one side of the open bay. A door slid smoothly open at her approach. The humor in her sending barely masked the naked awe as she sent <After all these eons, the machinery still works. Our ancestors were truly architects without equal.>

Talon was close enough to hear one of the gallen send quietly <Or maybe the Shells just repaired it.> The Tenoin shared a quick grin with the technician, and then the group filed in to the narrow tunnel that led further underground.

The first sharp turn hit Talon with the deeply unnatural experience of feeling the mind-signatures of the loroi ahead of her disappear once they rounded the corner, gone as immediately as if they had been snuffed out. They had warned her and the warriors who arrived on the Ring aboard her dropship how the Soia metal blocked sanzai somehow, but it was truly something else to actually feel it herself.

Why would the Soia make something like that, and especially why would they line an entire underground facility with the stuff? Were those distant ancestors just so strong with their sanzai that they could power through the blocking, somehow? Or had this been a facility where only those most in disgrace — cowards and criminals — were sent to work, as some sort of punishment?

After several twists and turns in the ever-descending pathways, the team spread into a large open chamber. Dim, ancient lighting illuminated a messy scene: Umiak containers were spread out in front of a door off to the side of the room, and Shells by the dozen lay scattered around the room. It took Talon a few moments to realize that the floor wasn’t supposed to be dark black, but rather it was the Umiak blood stuck to her boot as she stepped in it.

<The blast reached this far into the facility?> questioned one soroin.

<Unlikely.> observed the red-haired Teidar. She knelt by one of the dead Shells, telekinetically peeling back its death-stilled limbs to look underneath. <Weapons fire. Energy impacts, and big ones.>

Stillstorm turned to look at Tempo. <The Enemy fought among themselves?>

<It is… not unheard of.> the Mizol sent back. She stalked around the room, examining the carnage. <The Enemy are no more immune to infighting than we are. But why here?>

Fireblade indicated the only other door in the room besides the one leading to the surface. <These containers are arranged to provide cover against an attack from that doorway.>

<Evidently not enough cover.> quipped one of the soroin, kicking a dead Shell. <Fine by me.>

Tempo walked up to the door in question. It did not open, even when she set one gloved hand against it. <What could cause the Enemy to turn their weapons against each other?>

<Whatever it is, I want to find it.> said Stillstorm. Her side-channels leaked ideas of Soia weapons so powerful as to cause the Shells to fight their brethren over them. <Gallen, get this door open.> she leaned against the wall as the technician set to work, and stared back at Tempo.

To Talon, it felt like the Lashret was trying to keep her sending between the two senior officers, but it was still receivable to her even near the other side of the room. Some ‘echoing’ effect of the Soia metal? <Parat, any theories?>

<Something incredibly valuable, perhaps. It is believed that the Enemy have some sort of clan-analog system in their society, although it is unknown how much competition there is between such groupings, let alone outright hostility. But if there were Umiak from two rival ‘clans’ assigned to search here, and one of them found a Soia artifact of such incredible importance to their Hierarchy that it would elevate one clan above another...> She shook her head. <It is still far outside of what is known about Umiak psychology. I truly cannot say what may have so driven them to such an act.>

<I see.> Stillstorm sent. She leaned forwards and looked down. <Gallen, progress on the door?>

<Will take a few bima, Lashret.> sent the technician. <The Shells have worked pretty hard to lock it down, from our side. Welded their own cross-bars over it. They really wanted it closed.>

<Then we really want it open.> the Lashret replied. <Make it so.> She turned back to Tempo. <Is it not possible that—>

A burst of alarm came from one of the soroin standing next to the door through which they had all entered. <Listen! Sounds from above!>

All activity froze, minds and ears straining at the silence. And then, echoing down the same corridors that they had walked through only hundreds of solon ago:

K-chunk K-chunk K-chunk.

An ominous rhythm that all loroi knew well.

Hardtroops.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^6

The first wave lay piled at the bottom of the ramp into the room, their stacked bodies keeping the door from closing even as it repeatedly tried. But sounds from behind the four fallen hardtroops showed that more were coming.

With a grunt, Talon and the four soroin next to her heaved one of the Shell supply crates over onto its side. It joined the line of the others, now re-arranged to protect the loroi now seeking to defend against the other door than earlier. She could only hope that they would serve better for the loroi than the crates had done for their Umiak creators.

<Full power to your weapons.> the senior-most soroin sent. <No need to worry about too much penetration, not here.>

One of her younger caste-sisters added with false bravado <I liked 'too much penetration,' last time I visited a monastery!>

Forced laughter followed around the room, thin and brittle.

Talon noted that Stillstorm didn’t put an end to it, however. Instead, the Lashret sent curtly <Gallen, time until that door is open?>

<Less than a hundred solon, Lashret.> ground out the technician, as she and one other of her caste muscled the assembled ‘portable’ heavy laser cutter into position. <This Shell metal is tough as anything, and the Soia stuff is even worse!>

Talon’s attention snapped back to the entrance door as a waft of wind came down, strong enough to be felt even through her suit. As it was, her suit’s sensors chimed at her, flagging the sudden rise in heat. Some sort of explosion, outside on the surface? But if the dropship and its Type-A fuel had gone up, they would have felt the shockwave, even this deep down.

At her side, the one gallen not involved in the door-opening tapped at the sensor suite built into the arm of her specialized suit. Talon felt the rising panic that resulted. <Alert! There are fuel by-products in that gust of air — the Shells are bringing in combustion weapons!>

That… was probably smart of them. The entrance tunnel was narrow enough that hardtroops had to squeeze down single-file, and with the steep downward angle their feet were seen several solon before the bio-mechanical monsters could bring their weapons to bear.

The four slaughtered hardtroops still crammed into the doorway had shown that, well enough. But the hallway also led down: all the Enemy had to do was pour any combustible liquid down the tunnels, and set it alight. The loroi in their sealed suits could breathe through the smoke… but the sudden heat was another story.

<Enough of this.> sent Stillstorm. <Teidar, make a hole!>

<Gladly, Lashret!> The red-haired loroi stepped forwards as the gallen hurriedly scuttled aside. Ancient metal and Umiak additions alike bent aside, shrieking loudly as they were brutally torn asunder. It was far from subtle, and the door now could not be closed behind the loroi. It could not help delay Shell pursuit.

<Teidar, scout ahead. You four, follow her. Find the next door along and wait beyond it. Everybody else, rig explosives to these Umiak canisters and then follow. No reason to let the Enemy have an easy time following us.>

Talon helped one of the soroin affix a grenade to the side of the cargo pallet in front of her, proximity fuse set to go active in forty solon. It should be heat-resistant enough to still be active when any hardtroops burst in.

<Here they come!> sent one of the soroin nearest the door.

The heat in the room was now enough that Talon was sweating inside her suit, as the remaining loroi ran to the torn-open door. But just as she turned the corner, she could hear the K-Chunks of the approaching Umiak following hot on their heels.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It should have been obvious to her that the hardtroops would be less affected by the pursuing heat than the loroi were. They were half-machine already!

Yet it was only when the first Shell blaster shot charred a smoking, shallow divot into the wall next to her head that Talon realized just how close the Enemy had gotten.

<Run faster!> she sent loudly at the soroin in front of her. And how had a Tenoin pilot ended up as the rear-guard for this chase, anyways? This was what the Soroin infantry were for!

Talon sent two more power-eight shots back towards the enemy, neatly clipping off the sensor stalk that one hardtroop had stuck around the corner. Massive overkill… and of course that did little to actually harm the cursed thing.

<Which way did the others go!?> sent back the soroin frozen in the next antechamber, helmet darting frantically to and fro between the three diverging corridors that led out of it.

How was Talon supposed to know!?

<That way!> she replied, picking one of them at random. <Just run!>

The winding, narrow tunnels could not have been made worse for keeping a group together: the walls all looked the same, there was no sight-line longer than twenty paces, and the walls also blocked both sanzai and the ability to detect either the Enemy or her fellow loroi.

Really, anyone would have gotten lost.

The two soroin sprinted through the indicated doorway, followed by Talon. One of them was a soroin pideir just barely junior enough — and scared enough — to take orders from a tenoin arrir, while the other was that paset who had been shadowing the Mizol Parat every time Talon had seen them. How she ended up in Talon’s ad-hoc fireteam was anyone’s guess.

The door hissed shut behind them, its anonymity compared to its comrades hopefully forcing the pursuing Shells to split up intentionally just as the loroi had done accidentally. For several solon, the three just ran on, rounding two more corners and pounding along a narrow corridor. Then—

<What do you mean the next door won’t open!?> Talon sent, watching back along the way they’d came.

<It’s not welded shut, Arrir! It just won’t open!> the paset sent frantically.

<Try shooting it, or hitting it, or something!>

Hopefully the loud blasts and hammering had at least helped the soroin vent some anger, because it certainly hadn't made the Soia machinery work any better. The three of them were still trapped in this now dead-end room.

And the thumping of hardtroop footsteps was getting loud enough to drown out the paset’s fists.

<Forget it!> sent Talon, checking that her blaster carbine was still set to maximum power. <Take cover behind those columns and hide!>

The three of them sought shelter just as the booming K-Chunks got loud enough that Talon felt them more in her bones than in her ears. It only belatedly occurred to her that hiding behind the Soia-made pillars meant that she couldn’t sense the Umiak minds that now approached them.

Galaxy-ruling honored ancestors or no, if any of those cursed-metal-using piss-artists had lived to the present day, Talon would put her boot so far up their valley that their grandkids would be born with treadmarks across their faces!

The booming hardtroop footsteps halted close-by, range impossible to tell as the echoes continued to reverberate off of the walls for several solon more.

Go away go away go away no loroi here she sent to nobody in particular.

Did the Shells know that any loroi had come this way? Or were they just methodically searching each possible route?

A few mechanical clicks echoed quietly through the still air.

That’s it, tell your Shell friends that it’s all empty here. All fine. Nobody here. We’re all fine here, how are you?

A sensor-stalk peered around the corner, close enough for Talon to see her orange suit reflected in the Umiak’s camera-eye.

<SHRED THIS ENTIRE TILTED FIELD!> she sent at full volume, slamming a fist into the sensor even as she jammed her carbine around the corner one-handed and clamped down hard on the trigger.

The temperature in the cramped corridor spiked as high-powered blaster shots screamed down the narrow confines. Talon leaned around the corner, satisfied at the sight of the slumped-over hardtroop, two glowing holes burned through its torso. A second hardtroop behind it clanked rapidly towards her, the gun pod that had once served as its right ‘arm’ now a smoking slag-heap on the ground.

But behind that was yet another Umiak construct, and behind it another… and shadows danced against the far wall as yet more Shells clanked ever-closer.

Don’t they ever get tired of throwing bodies at us!? Talon thought even as she dropped the dis-armed hardtroop.

One of its comrades fired back at her, hitting the column in front of her and spitting molten Soia alloy across her helmet visor.

<Cover me!> she sent, ducking aside and wiping at the rapidly-cooling metal. Her right hand stung even through the glove where it contacted the ancient material. These Shells were throwing high-power shots right back at her!

The hallway reverberated with ear-splitting blasts that rattled her head even through the protection of her helmet. Hardtroops stomped forwards relentlessly, stepping over — and on, by the crunching sounds — their fallen without pity.

Talon cleared her vision just in time to see the soroin pideir catch a shot that burned straight through her shoulder. The loroi dropped with a cut-off sanzai shriek of agony, her mind-signature faint and fading by the solon. Still alive, but it wasn’t like there would be any doranzer coming for the three of them.

Talon took her turn again on the firing line, walking two shots up the abdomen of the Shell that had felled her comrade. It sagged to the side, only for yet another to loom behind it.

Talon drew a bead on the next Shell, and pulled the trigger.

Even above the echoing blasts that still reverberated through the room, that single, quiet click managed to be the loudest sound she had ever heard.

The charge pack was empty.

Talon would never admit it, but a soroin better trained for ground combat would have reacted faster. It took her nearly a solon of shock — not terror, she told herself — before she hammered the release switch, right arm dropping to the spare pack at her waist.

The only spare pack she had left.

In the time it took to slam the new pack home, the nearest hardtroop had surged forwards and was nearly upon her. She let off an unaimed shot even as she hurled herself to the ground, sharp cutting-claw whistling overhead. She fired upwards, burning a hole through the side of the trooper.

But must have missed anything critical.

The claw raced towards her once more, Talon twisting aside barely ahead of its impact.

A second hole burst through the monster’s abdomen from behind, its limp head sagging downwards as if to stare at the blaster-wound that had slain it.

Thank you, Paset!

And then, of course, more than eight times her own body-weight slammed down atop Talon, pinning her to the ground. The sudden pressure forced the air from her lungs as she sent out a mental yell of pain.

The soroin paset raced across the corridor, throwing her meager weight against the dead hardtroop slowly crushing the life from Talon’s body.

It didn’t budge.

<There’s no use. Leave me.> Talon sent, spots dancing in front of her eyes. <Send a few more of them to the Depths for me!>

Instead, the kid took three steps back and tried again, even as near-misses scorched her green uniform and neatly singed off the short, dark hair that had only begun to reach back from her scalp.

This time, the hardtroop corpse shifted. Not a lot, but enough.

With the last of her energy, Talon pushed it aside, gasping for air even as numb arms scrabbled for her dropped carbine. Blinking away stars, she ground out <You’re a hero, kid. Let’s remind these monsters what loroi are made of!>

Her grasp finally lighted on her blaster, and she pushed herself upright, flashing a reassuring smile at the young soroin who had granted her another few solons of life. The kid stared back at her, wide-eyed.

And collapsed.

Smoke trailed from two holes burned into her back.

Talon’s pulse pounded in her ears, teeth grinding at the sheer unfairness of it all. She’d never even known the paset’s name!

She hurled herself upright to a kneeling position, blaster carbine hurling death from one hand even as her off-hand took the laser pistol from the fallen paset’s limp grip.

More hardtroops fell to the unaimed fire — it was now dawning on Talon just what it meant to fight an ‘army’ of Shells with only fifty loroi — but her fury-fueled barrage also emptied the charge pack.

The carbine clattered to the floor, Talon now staring down a charging hardtroop with only a laser pistol ready.

And ducked to the side as enemy fire slammed into the floor a finger’s breadth away from her foot, white-hot metal droplets spalling upwards. A hundred scalding points seared at her, burning fingers digging deep into her flesh.

Talon doubled over in agony, but her grip on the pistol still spat defiance back at the Enemy. Eyes clouded by pain glared up at the Shell as it loomed over her, a line of blackened scorch marks across its front.

Stupid shredded pistol wasn’t set to full power!

She flicked the power switch on the pistol, only for a leg-sweep to knock it from her grip. Gathering what strength she had left, Talon hurled herself up off the floor and leapt onto the hulking mechanical monster, arms tearing at anything they could reach. If it hadn’t been for her helmet, she’d have bitten at the hated Enemy!

She would not go to the Depths peacefully!

Talon grabbed hold of the hardtroop’s ‘head’ and twisted hard. She knew full well that their brains — what brains the Shells had, at any rate — were protected in the hardtroop’s body instead, but that was well beyond her ability to harm with only muscle power.

It would be only a symbolic strike; she had already killed her last Shell. But she would die doing her level best to strike back at the Enemy in any way left to her!

Metal twisted under her hand, the thin column linking head to body bending — yielding — to a loroi in the grip of bloodlust. The lens of the nearest camera to her twitched, focusing on her.

And froze.

The hardtroop slumped to the ground, life fading from its body.

WHAT

Talon stumbled back, eyes wide. How?

She looked up to see two more hardtroops down the corridor, and for a moment they stared back at her, frozen. She imagined that her own shock was mirrored by theirs.

And then the nearest one leveled its two blaster-arms at her, and fired at her.

No, fired past her.

A return bolt felled it a heartbeat later, cobalt-blue rather than the off-purple of any blaster she knew.

Before she could turn around to look, an unseen force shoved her aside behind one of the columns pock-marked by weapons fire. An unknown voice barked aloud in her ear, language incomprehensible to her stunned mind.

“[Get the Hell down you damn fool!]”

Talon stared across the corridor at the black-armored loroi who had saved her. Mirrored visor stared down the hallway, as a carbine-length weapon of unknown make spat blood-blue death at the hardtroops.

Who was that!? Her uniform was used by no caste and lacked rank tabs, which usually meant ‘Mizol dark-ops team.’ But Talon had never run into any such people aboard Tempest, and certainly hadn’t carried any over in her dropship. So how did they get here?

The loroi quickly glanced over at her and spoke again. “[Who the fuck are these guys, anyways? Are they throwing fucking robots at us, now?]”

It was halfway through the latest burst of gibberish that Talon realized she couldn’t sense this loroi. She was completely invisible to sanzai, even at this range. Talon had met a few mizol operatives that had rotated through Tempest over her own time aboard, and even the ones who showed off just what they could manage hadn’t been able to replicate a trick like that.

Definitely some sort of dark-ops team. Deeply classified.

But… why the nonsense vocalizations? Who was she fooling?

<Who are you?> Talon sent.

No reaction. The mizol didn’t even look up, focusing entirely on the Umiak that were falling one after the other under her gun. <Hey! HEY!> Talon tried again. If this soldier had somehow followed them this far… maybe they had brought a doranzer!

Still no effect.

Talon glanced down the hallway. Empty. Finally the Shells had run out of bodies, or just wised up and were waiting for them to try and leave.

She sprinted across the narrow corridor, crouching next to the mizol.

“[Whoever these fucks are, they sure go down easy. Hey, what are you—]”

Talon hauled on the other loroi’s arm, muscles straining — that black armor was heavy! — as she physically dragging her over to where the two dying soroin lay. If the mizol refused to receive her sanzai, then she’d lead her around like a child.

“[Ah, fuck. MEDIC!]” the mizol shouted. Still using solely verbal speech — Talon hadn’t picked up even a sliver of the sanzai that must have accompanied it. These people were good. “[Doc, get up here! We’ve got two elves down!]”

More pounding feet on metal. But this time from behind them.

Talon let go of the mizol and whirled around in time to see the door that had stymied the three of them earlier slide open as another black-armored loroi sprinted through, dropped to a knee, and slid the last two paces to where the two soroin lay. This latest one drew a white box from her waist, with a bright-blue cross emblazoned across it.

Talon watched the doranzer — for what else could they be? — work. Still in complete sanzai-silence, only jabbering away in the same gibberish in a surprisingly deep voice.

“[Who the fuck sent these kids out here without real armor!? I don’t think this suit of hers even has a shield generator!]”

“[I know! And the live elf here hasn’t said a damn word the whole time!]”

The doranzer took a small cylinder from the box, inserting its nozzle into the smoldering holes in the soroin paset’s side. Filling them with some sort of foaming solution.

Far be it from Talon to criticize their work, but that was no medicine she’d ever seen.

She turned from the strange sight to examine the hardtroops. Her own kills lay crumpled in heaps, blaster holes shot straight through them.

But the mizol’s kills were half-melted.

Were still melting, sagging as if they were softening from the inside-out even as she watched.

What was going on?

“[Okay, these two are stable. I think they’ll live — elves are tougher than they look and all that. Now, you said the Traffic Cone over here hasn’t said anything. Have you tried talking to her?]”

“[Of course!]”

“[In Soia Trade?]”

Talon perked up at that. She recognized two of those words, at least. Was this some sort of super-secret mizol code language? For that matter, should she be hearing this? “Will you speak to me in this language?” she asked.

“[See? I think she understands.]”

“[Hell, Doc, my Trade is shit. I’d end up insulting her or something by accident. Best to wait for the Colonel to sweep around and meet us here. Should be here any second, anyways.]”

Talon was about to repeat herself when she heard approaching footsteps from behind. Lighter than the hardtroops, fortunately, but it might be the Shells just sending regular soldiers at them now. She spun on one foot, pistol rising.

Looked down the barrel just in time for another black-clad mizol to round the corner. This latest loroi held a carbine low in her right hand, while her main hand was empty. The unknown operative paused and held her arms wide. “Easy, now, we’re on the same side.”

Talon sagged with relief. Finally, one that spoke a real language. She lowered her pistol. “Who are you, and what is going on?”

“I could ask you the same question.” the mizol’s low-pitched voice carried the recognizable ring of command. She stepped closer, the top of her helmet level with Talon’s eyes. “What Legion are you from?”

Talon blinked. “Legion?”

The mizol commander sighed. “What ship, then.”

“I am from Tempest.”

The loroi in front of her visibly sagged in relief. “Good, Tempest’s here. That will get things cleared up.”

“[Finally some good news, Sir?]” asked one of the operatives behind Talon, again in their secret language.

“[I think we’re getting somewhere now, Corporal.]” The commander then asked Talon “Who are these soldiers?” She nudged one of the fallen hardtroops with her armored boot.

Now Talon’s confusion came roaring back. “...Hardtroops?” Who could not recognize the diabolical face of the Enemy, the foot-soldiers who had led so many atrocities known throughout the Union?

“Huh.” Before Talon could come up with any meaning for the nonsense sound, the commander continued “First time I’ve seen them. Are they some new creation of the Soia?”

That really short-circuited Talon’s thoughts.

What?

How?

She defaulted back to “Who are you?”

The commander tilted her helmeted head to one side, as if confused. “I am Colonel Pierre Jardin.” At the blank look on Talon’s face, she added slowly “UNSC Helljumpers. Ring a bell?”

Talon’s worsening bewilderment must have been obvious, because the commander only sighed. “Let’s see if this helps.” She slung the carbine and reached up to unlatch her helmet.

Talon found herself staring at the palest loroi face she’d ever seen — not a trace of healthy blue coloration to be found! Gray hair cut embarrassingly short topped a sharp-lined face, unsettlingly-round brown eyes set deep on both sides of a tall, hooked nose. And... and her ears were both horribly disfigured, cut down to rounded stubs!

Her breath caught. There was no sign of scar tissue on those ears. Between the deathly-pale skin color, the strange hair, the maimed ears, and—

And the eyes were entirely the wrong shape!

This — this was not a loroi.

It was some horrible imitation of one!

“What are you?” Some new trick of the Hierarchy? But no, they had— She snapped her pistol back to bear on this imitation-loroi.

Only for a black-clad fist to arrest her left hand in an utterly unmoving grip, the laser pistol pointed off to one side.

From behind her, one of the not-operatives quipped “[Looks like the old Jardin Charm still works, eh sir?]” Humor was obvious enough, despite the code language. Or was it a 'code,' as opposed to simply ‘alien’?

The not-doranzer added “[Nah, this is just like when he first met his wife.]”

“[Really? No shit?]”

“[Can it, you two.]” the not-mizol commander said, her eyes narrowing as they searched Talon’s face. “You really do not recognize me?”

No, not ‘her’ eyes, Talon realized. Between the shorter height and the face shape… ‘his’ eyes.

While the Tenoin was struck dumb by shock, the strange alien male met her wide-eyed gaze and continued “You do not exactly look old enough to have fought in the First War, and I cannot imagine that we would have been forgotten in only a few decades.”

Whatever this was, whatever they were, Talon recognized when a situation was far above her seniority. This was something she’d be glad to hand off to Stillstorm… wherever the rest of the loroi — the real loroi — had gone. “My commanding officer can answer your questions better than I can.”

And were those the truest words ever spoken aloud!

At least these aliens were clearly hostile to the Shells, and… ‘not hostile’ to the Loroi. Talon continued “She and her team are elsewhere in this facility. We became… separated.”

“I see.” The ‘UNSC’ said, before looking past her at his subordinates. “[Can those two be moved?]”

“[Biofoam’s worked its magic, sir. The nanites are well-spread through their systems now. You can do anything short of use them for battering rams and they’ll be fine.]” the not-doranzer replied in what Talon was now certain was an alien language. Where was that Listel Tozet when you needed her? For that matter, the actual Mizol would be best-suited for this bewildering situation.

“[Good.]” said the column-commander. “[I’ll take point; you two follow behind. The other teams are still searching the upper levels, so we might run into more of these bug-bots.]” He turned to Talon, and after a few solon drew a sidearm from his waist and held it out to her. “I don’t know why you’re using popguns against these Bug-creatures, but here’s something a bit better. Don’t waste shots.”

He turned around and walked down the corridor, Talon pausing for a moment before hurrying to catch up. The alien energy-pistol in her hand was even more proof that these were not loroi. But if it had as strong of a punch as the rest of these not-loroi’s weapons, she was glad of the upgrade.

The column-commander began to put his helmet back on, but Talon heard him mutter “[Keep an eye on her. If she turns that gun on me, kill her.]”

SpoilerShow

Apologies to those of you who were expecting the Flood or a "Soia" AI. I didn't want to *completely* copy Halo's plot just with the UNSC swapped for the Union and the Covenant swapped for the Hierarchy. But I *do* want to play with some of the 'themes' of the Halo storyline.

So while in canon Halo the UNSC finally manages to win a genocidal war that they were losing, they do so by discovering more about their past, the history of the Forerunner civilization and uncovering ancient weapons left behind by them. Likewise, in *this* story, the Loroi will seek to eventually win a genocidal war that they are (slowly) losing by discovering more about the Soia civilization and uncovering ancient weapons left behind.

[Snoofman]

Stillstorm: It’s obvious that the Shells have engineered some sort of diabolical, mind-controlled, pink-skinned husks… that they crafted into the likeness of our males so that we might put our guard... but are programmed to do the Hierarchy's malign Shell bidding!

Beryl: Or… since they seem to have different bio-chemistry from either Soia or Umiak anatomy, maybe these humans are just… a recently discovered alien species.

Cloud: Or maybe these humans are in fact a template race discovered by the original Soia who in turn used them to design and bio-engineer the Loroi. That would explain why we never showed up in the ancient Soia records until after the introduction of all the other Soia races. We were never the true Soia to begin with. Our ancestors just came to that conclusion and indoctrinated us to accept it.

(All Loroi stare unimpressed at Cloud.)

Talon: I like the commander’s mind-controlled husk idea more.

Beryl: (snickering) Yeah, greenie. Your idea sounds kind of dumb.

[Urist]

<Door’s sealed, Lashret! They’ll need some serious explosives to get through it, now!> sent the gallen as she stepped away from the control panel.

Fireblade eyed the ancient Soia mechanism suspiciously. She had had to push the very limits of her powers to force a way through that first Soia door nearer the surface, but there was no way for her to test this latest one without doing the same to it. But perhaps the Soia built the security doors of their control center to a heavier standard than the others?

She would have to trust that the gallen knew what she was doing.

<I see.> Stillstorm sent. She turned to the pair of loroi behind her, where the gallen bastobar and listel tozet crowded together in front of what appeared to be the main Soia control console in this room. Possibly in the entire facility. <What progress on the other systems?>

<Moderate success, Lashret.> replied the bastobar. <The internal security system is mostly non-functional, but we have control over this chamber and the outlying corridors. Not further than sixty paces or so, but enough.>

She swiped her arm above the console and a video-feed blinked into being, projected above it. Four hardtroops stood crowded together, gesturing at the sealed doorway ahead of them.

Fireblade took a step to the left, then several more. The projected video didn’t change its apparent angle — it was somehow tracking her. A quick mental query confirmed that each loroi spread around the room saw the same image, no matter her position relative to it.

Definitely Soia technology, no mere directional hologram. And if the Soia could manufacture a metal that blocked sanzai, was it not possible that this image was projected not physically, but mentally? The Teidar nodded, impressed.

<We’ll get advance warning if the Shells start bringing up anything dangerous.> the gallen finished.

<Most fortunate. And the purpose of this facility?> Stillstorm directed the last at Beryl.

<It is fascinating!> Fireblade quirked a thin smile at the joyful awe in the young loroi’s sanzai. <This is indeed the control room for that energy beam that destroyed Tempest.>

<Then it is strange that the Enemy were not present when we arrived.> Stillstorm observed. <Gallen, do you have access to recordings of that video?>

<Negative, Lashret. This system is more… ‘complete’ than any other Soia computer system we have found; it will take some time until we understand all of its functions.>

<Regrettable. Listel, continue.>

The barely-contained eagerness burst out once more from the listel tozet. She gestured to the console over which she was leaning, <This facility is not only for fire control. This map shows that there are many levels below us, which are designated as ‘preservation chambers’ in which are stored ‘Allies!’> She highlighted the strange Soia word.

<’Allies?’> mused Stillstorm.

Waves of thought raced around the crowded room as each loroi added her — increasingly improbable — guess to what that might mean. Anything from Soia combat drones, to artificial intelligences, or even some of the Soia-Liron species that were known to have existed. Even Fireblade knew how much of a find it would be if they discovered the preserved body of a Tagid, or a Mozeret, or any of the other now-extinct Soia creations.

For that matter, finding an ancient Neridi or Barsam corpse would be a major discovery as well.

Or a Soia-era Loroi.

Anticipating the Lashret’s next question, Beryl added <The lower levels can be accessed from the other two hallways that branched off earlier. One leads to the main elevator system, and the other to the maintenance tunnels.>

Stillstorm was quiet, and Beryl’s happiness slowly melted away as the realization swept around the room. While the Shells couldn’t easily get in to the control room, neither could the loroi inside get out past the Enemy. And while three loroi had gotten separated from the main group and may have instead gone down those two routes, it was certain that the Shells would have pursued.

With inevitable consequences for those three lost loroi.

<The energy weapon, then.> Stillstorm eventually sent. Her brusque sending metaphorically closed the door on any possible discoveries that could have been found elsewhere in the facility. They would forever remain unknown to Tempest's survivors, no matter their proximity. <Is it operational?>

<Yes and no, Lashret.> responded the bastobar. <There are no damage reports, and the main energy source is online. But the system refuses to engage its targeting routines. A software block, it seems. It is possible that the Shells accidentally tripped a security system that locked the controls.>

<Keep attempting to bypass it. If we can turn that beam on the Enemy starships around this Ring...> Stillstorm’s hope-tinged satisfaction radiated warmly.

<Look!> one of the soroin suddenly sent loudly, indicating the security camera feed. <Something is happening!>

The four hardtroops haltingly turned around, stomping back down the tunnel. No sooner had the first turned the corner at the end of the camera’s vision than it was slammed back against the far wall, a bright-blue beam carving through its upper thorax.

The three survivors charged forwards, one extending its gun-arm to fire blindly around the corner. A solon later and the gun-arm slumped to the ground, blackened and smoking. Just as it hit the floor plates, a small spherical object rolled into sight at the Shells’ feet.

The hardtroop had no time to react before an explosion whited-out the camera feed.

By the time the ancient Soia machine restored its view, the corridor was lifeless. Four hardtroops lay scattered in pieces on the ground.

There was a collective wave of elation, which faded rapidly into shock… and then concern.

<Those were not blaster shots.> noted one older soroin.

One of her caste-sisters evidently agreed. <It is possible that our errant sisters found operational Soia small-arms in the lower levels...>

That was too optimistic for Fireblade’s sense. The universe had never yet been so kind to the inheritors of the Soia; why would it start now? And even then, two junior soroin and a single tenoin against who-knew how many hardtroops? Soia guns or not, that was an unlikely victory.

With a mental ping to Stillstorm, Fireblade stepped to one side so that she could see the video feed while also looking at the single door into the control room. With some trial-and-error, she would be able to use her powers against anyone — or anything — in the corridor outside. It was difficult to judge the distance accurately enough by using the video feed, but it would have to be enough.

<Be ready, Teidar.> sent Stillstorm in a focused, low-power sanzai. <We may have need of your strength shortly.>

Fireblade had earlier confirmed with the Lashret what their final plan would be. If the Shells kept coming, eventually the loroi would be overrun. But now that they knew how important this control room was, Fireblade had been ordered to trash the irreplaceable Soia consoles once it was obvious that the Enemy was about to break through.

Hopefully, the gallen may yet be able to turn the energy weapon on the Shell warships, first. But at the very least, the Enemy would not have it available to use when the rest of Strikeforce-51 returned with reinforcements.

Which only left the question of just what was fighting the Shells outside.

<There!> called a soroin, as movement flickered at the end of the corridor. Fifty-seven loroi held their breath.

First around the corner was a black-clad loroi. Fireblade frowned — as head of security, she knew that there had been no warriors with such armor aboard Tempest. And none had arrived among the warriors in the dropship. Had Mazeit Moonglow sent further reinforcements? If so, a disguised mizol operative was a… strange choice.

That being said, this mizol had somehow fought her way here despite the empty holster at her right hip, so evidently the choice had worked.

<Do you recognize them, Parat?> asked Stillstorm.

<Negative, Lashret.> replied Tempo. <That is no armor pattern with which I am familiar.>

So much for that idea. If any mizol had been part of Strikeforce-51 ‘off the record,’ then Tempo would have been the one to know about them. And this was no time to keep mizol secrets, not so far behind Enemy lines.

A tenoin arrir followed behind the not-mizol, pistol jerking from one still hardtroop to another. Clearly nervous. Unfortunately, with the sanzai-blocking door shut none of the loroi inside the command center could send to her, so the mute camera feed was all they had.

<Whoever they are, it appears that they have found our errant sisters.> observed the senior-most soroin as two more black-armored warriors appeared, unmoving soroin slung over their shoulders. The blood-streaked green uniforms showed the heavy fighting they must have been in, yet the armored not-mizol seemed unharmed themselves.

Stillstorm sent orders. <Gallen, open that door. Doranzer mazil-toza, at ready.>

The loroi arranged around the room crouched low behind what cover they could find while the gallen worked at the console controls.

For her part, Fireblade nodded with triumph as she finally found the right distance, and the hardtroop hulk nearest the door shifted slightly at her telekinetic command.

Two bright-blue pulses of fire immediately cut it to ribbons. The two warriors carrying the unconscious soroin evidently had no problem firing their weapons single-handed… and with the reaction speed and accuracy of well-honed veterans.

<Jumpy, aren’t they?> noted a soroin.

<If they fought through all the Shells between here and the surface, I could not blame them for still being quick on the trigger.> sent one of her caste-sisters.

The door began to slowly grind upwards, out of the way.

Fireblade noted that the strange not-mizol commander’s gaze lingered on the last hardtroop, her left hand flashing rapidly through several unknown hand signals as she stepped past it.

A strange choice — a loroi would only resort to the use of such gestures rather than sanzai or speech when she really did not wish to be overheard by anyone nearby. Relatively few warriors were even trained in military gesture codes, anyways: no alien could ‘listen in’ on sanzai, after all.

So what made this warrior so secretive that she wished to conceal her message from the tenoin accompanying their small group?

The newcomers stepped into the room, carrying the two unconscious soroin. Two doranzer immediately rushed up and took their charges.

Fireblade’s sense of unease only grew. The three mizol each had an iron-hard lotai, utterly invisible to the mind. Why?

<Lashret.> the Tenoin Arrir stepped forward, sending rapidly. <We encountered these three in one of the side tunnels. They fought off the Shells and followed us here.>

Then she really dropped a bombshell, all the more shocking for the truth in her sanzai. <They’re not Loroi. I... think they might be Soia.>

Impossible!

A thought that was mirrored around the room, shock and incredulity bouncing from one loroi to another. Growing stronger as each warrior’s disbelief only fed the others.

<Enough.> ordered Stillstorm. <Their lotai?>

<I… don’t know, Lashret. I have not felt them drop it yet, not even for a moment. They have only used spoken Trade.>

Stillstorm’s surprise at that was palpable. But only for a moment, before the experienced Torrai squashed it. She stepped forwards, gaze locked on the mirrored visor of the lead… whatever they were. “I am Torrai Lashret Dellasoni, commanding these warriors. Introduce yourself.>

Fireblade felt the disapproval leaking from Parat Tempo at the clipped tone, and the Mizol immediately stepped forwards next to the Torrai. “And I am Mizol Parat Tempo, diplomatic officer. We are thankful for your rescue of our sisters, and are curious as to who you are and how you came to be here.”

Fireblade stifled a pulse of humor. She’d certainly seen ‘good loroi, bad loroi’ being used before, usually on aliens — had played the ‘bad loroi’ role, herself — but it was amusing to see a mizol of all castes forced into the ‘good loroi’ spot.

Then again, compared to Stillstorm…

“I am Colonel Pierre Jardin, UNSC Helljumpers.” The alien spoke in accented Trade, at least the first few words. The rest were a jumble of strange phonemes, utterly unfamiliar.

Stillstorm and Tempo exchanged a brief flurry of sanzai, too focused for Fireblade to overhear. Tempo quickly stepped in front of Stillstorm. “I am afraid that those terms are not familiar to us.” Then she voiced the question that every loroi had bouncing around in her skull. “Of what… species are you?”

The two aliens in the rear glanced between each other. One said in a low voice and strange language, “[Jesus, how long have we been in cryo?]”

“[Time to find out.]” said the column-leader. She slowly took her helmet off, revealing a loroi-esque but definitely alien face that glanced calmly around the room. “None of you recognize me... or my species?”

Stillstorm beat Tempo to the punch, sending quickly to the tenoin arrir. <It is a male?>

<I think so, Lashret.>

Just barely strong enough to be received, Fireblade heard a soroin send <Do you want a volunteer to find out?>

A mental flick from Fireblade quieted the young warrior. This was not the time for such humor.

Tempo spoke, “We do not. Yet you seem to recognize us as Loroi?”

The alien male let out a long sigh. “We are ‘Humans.’ We have fought against and then alongside—” he cut himself off. “It is a long story, one that I cannot believe could have been quickly forgotten. If I may ask, how long has it been since the beginning of the Soia Civil War?”

One could have heard a hair-pin drop.

He glanced around the room for several solons. When no response was forthcoming, the ‘Human’ continued slowly, “The emergency cryogenic systems seem to have suffered a partial failure. The tubes themselves still worked, fortunately, but the clocks have all been fried and displayed only their maximum number count. It seems implausible that we have truly slept for over eight thousand years, yet your lack of recognition is… alarming.” His gaze flicked between Stillstorm and Tempo. “How. Long.”

Even the two senior officers could not conceal all of their unease, as loroi around the entire room exchanged dumbfounded thoughts on how to answer the question.

Eventually, Tempo carefully responded, “We are not… 'aware' of a ‘Soia Civil War’. It seems that there are many theories about the circumstances surrounding the collapse of the Soia Empire, but all records and archaeological evidence agree that it occurred no less than two-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand years ago.”

The alien commander’s eyes shot wide, and his mouth fell open. No sound came out.

Behind him, one of the other Humans sagged to one side, only held up by their fellow alien.

The Colonel shut his mouth with an audible click. “I… see. This is a… remarkable claim.” His voice was shaky.

Stillstorm said “As is your claim to have been alive in the time of the Soia. A claim for which you have provided no proof. Yet you maintain your lotai, shielding yourself behind spoken words.”

The Colonel worked his jaw for several solon, locked in a staring contest with the Torrai. Eventually, he said in his alien tongue “[Corporal, you’re up. Turn your Beacon on.]”

“[Aw Hell, sir, in a room with this many elves?” The second Human, the one who had only just recovered from their obvious shock, spoke. “I’m going to be swinging in the breeze, here… and I think that one in the back with the red hair is a Guard.]”

“[Good thing you’ve been thinking only kind, charitable thoughts, then!]” chimed the third Human. Fireblade could make nothing out of their language, but assuming that tone was similar enough to spoken Trade, she recognized two warriors trading jibes.

The second Human reached up with one hand and fiddled with a control on the side of her helmet.

Like a flare bursting into life, the alien’s mind flashed into being as her — no, his — lotai blinked away. Fireblade pushed just enough against its essence to feel the truth in his thoughts, brushing aside the weaker questing tendrils of the other loroi in the room.

And what thoughts they were.

Pitched firefights on every conceivable battlefield, from the rain-blasted surface of a planet to the claustrophobic confines of an alien spaceship to the outer hull of some colossal space-born structure!

Humans, both his fellow ODSTs — ‘Orbital Drop Shock Troopers,’ an utterly insane concept yet one lavished with pride by his mind — fighting alongside those of other castes, other… ‘branches.’

And Loroi.

Loroi in armor unlike any that Fireblade had ever seen, interlocking blue-purple plates painted in dizzying patterns of brightly-colored paint. Loroi barking orders and responses in that alien tongue, in ‘English.’ Wounded loroi being pulled into cover by humans, and humans by loroi.

She dug further through the alien mind.

As she had seen in the memories of so many other soldiers — and her own — the comrades at one’s side were far more… 'detailed' than the enemy downrange. Aliens of many sizes and shapes hurled incandescent death back at the human-loroi teams, storming forwards heedless of the return fire.

None of them were familiar to her, but their features ran and blurred together. Yet one thing was constant: glimpsed between gaps torn in armor, or through the cracked visor of a fallen foe… Soia-blue skin.

And in one single glimpse, a very loroi-like figure stood behind the vague enemy hordes. Tall, lithe, armored… but unarmed. At least, not with any weapon carried in her hands: a prominent crest adorned the brow of her helmet, glowing ominously with energy.

It was all far too complex, too detailed to be a falsehood. Too many details rushed forwards in this human’s — Corporal Chris Lovik’s — memories. Of personal connections to the soldiers who had fought and died alongside him. Of the shared half-myth stories told about those who had served in their unit before he had joined it. Of the Colonel who had battled through nearly a century of brutal, grinding warfare — a losing war — and the Loroi who came to fight at his side.

The shock of it all stayed with Fireblade for several seconds after she pulled back from the alien’s mind. She pitched her sanzai to be received by all, <He tells the truth, Lashret.>

Tempo spoke, her own voice faintly quivering with shock that no loroi could have avoided, “It seems… that this is a great discovery, of the history of our people. A great rediscovery.”

Corporal Lovik re-engaged his lotai. That was the part that was perhaps the most shocking to Fireblade: artificial lotai! She had always known that the ancient loroi had held an understanding of the mind that was far beyond anything even imagined by their distant daughters, but to feel it right in front of her…!

Colonel Jardin said, “It… is, yes.” He shook himself, drawing his shoulders back and standing taller. “Your Navigator said that you were here alongside Tempest. Is she… still alive?” His voice trembled slightly towards the end.

Fireblade sucked in a sharp breath. The Human could not possibly mean the warship. Yet the other obvious meaning…

“You ask after a specific Loroi.” Tempo clarified.

“Yes. Did she complete her mission?” Even with his lotai intact, Fireblade could feel the sea of emotion so strong that it bled into his vocal speech. He withdrew a thin tablet from a thigh pocket and tapped a brief command into it. The device projected a small holographic image above it, rotating slowly. “This loroi.”

Tall, with light-blue skin and white markings painted on each cheek. Further markings down her neck disappeared into the heavy black armor she wore, so similar to that of these Helljumpers. The image captured her leaning over a table which displayed a terrain map of some unknown place, the projected glow lighting her face from below as she looked up at the camera with a faint frown. A face crowned by a silver headdress and framed by thick, green hair which flowed down to pool around her booted feet.

In the back of the room, one soroin dropped her rifle in shock.

<Impossible!> sent Beryl. <It cannot be her!>

Fireblade disagreed. She had seen the same face, the same tattoos, the same loroi thousands of times.

Every time she entered or left Tempest’s bridge.

Beryl was not finished. <The Legend of Tempest is known to predate the Splintering, yes, but it has certainly no mentions of aliens, or anything like this…!> her sanzai trailed off into a blur of excitement.

<And yet this alien has an image of her.> Fireblade sent.

Tempo said “We have… ‘Legends’ of a Loroi named Tempest. One who seems to look much like this one you show. Could you describe her history?”

Beryl’s awed eagerness shone brightly as the listel waited for his response.

Colonel Jardin spent several seconds in silence, many emotions playing across his face. “From the beginning, then. She was born and raised aboard the moon-ship Chastiser, hailed as its Captain before she reached even a century of age. She earned accolades and honor throughout the exploration and conquest of much of the Orion Arm. By her four-hundredth year, she was the foremost Legion commander in the Soia Empire.”

The alien’s words — so strange, and yet told so frankly — played around the edges of Fireblade’s psyche. But no loroi dared interrupt the tale with any of the many questions that swarmed around the room.

“Then came Humanity. The Soia… came into conflict with us, and she was sent to oversee our annexation.”

Fireblade swallowed against the unease rising in her throat.

“Over the five decades of the First War, her actions brought her great fame throughout the Soia Empire.” Colonel Jardin’s voice was hard. “She smashed through the Outer Colonies, taking hundreds of systems and… convincing them to cease resistance. Those that did not, were put to the torch.”

Fireblade didn’t need to feel his mind to know what that meant.

“When Operation SUNSPEAR struck back at the core territories of the Soia Empire, political pressure forced her to be withdrawn back to the home sectors. She took personal control over the Interior Patrol Forces and stabilized the situation. Members of every Soia species and form, on every world and habitat, came to consider her their foremost protector.

“This was not well-liked by the Soia Council.”

A rush of dread raced around the room.

“Sheer public adoration had forced them to elevate her to a newly-created post on the Council, their governing body. This was the first time that a Warrior-form had been so honored. A Loroi.”

Tempo carefully asked “It is of interest to us to know just who — or perhaps ‘what’ — the Soia were. It is thought by many—” she carefully did not look at Stillstorm’s tensely-rigid form next to her “— that ‘Soia’ and ‘Loroi’ were one and the same.”

“That was practically becoming true. But it certainly didn’t start that way.” Colonel Jardin gestured to one of the other two humans with him. “My medic tells me that your two wounded still have the marks of Soia engineering. Tuned metabolism, healing factor, greater muscle density, faster reactions, the works. None of those were original to the Soia species.” He turned his head back and forth, scanning the room. “If I am not mistaken, each of you here now are descended from the ‘warrior’-form of the Soia, the ‘Loroi.’ There were many others, tuned for any task which the Empire required, from manual labor to detailed engineering. When a task was beyond their ability to reshape the base form of the Soia species to its efficient execution, an alien species was selected that could be remade to serve.”

Fireblade fought down revulsion, feeling as her fellow loroi around the room felt the same disgust. The Human could as easily have been describing the Shells, with their ‘people’ twisted to suit whatever need their society felt.

“And the Soia rulers themselves?” asked Tempo, voice impressively level.

“Were of the most exalted form, the ‘Elders’ from whom the entire Empire derived its name. Command-rank Soia — ‘True’ Soia, as they would have said — were not born, but made. Very infrequently, a member of a lesser form who had distinguished themselves and reached at least several centuries of existence would be… remade. Their body reforged into a purified exemplar of wisdom, grace, and sheer power, made possible solely through extensive genetic engineering and cybernetic augmentation. The senior-most among even them made up the Soia Council, the ruling body of the Empire.”

He narrowed his eyes as he stared back at Tempo. Briefly glanced past her at Fireblade. “In particular, these Soia were granted the abilities to speak with their mind and to manipulate the energies found at the very boundaries between realspace and Slipspace.”

For a moment, Fireblade felt only disbelief. That the Loroi themselves had not always had sanzai, that they had not always had some born with further powers such as those she herself wielded. Everything she knew — she thought she knew — about the Soia shifted underfoot.

Like the deck of a sinking ship.

“Yet they feared the rising influence of the Soia’s warrior-forms. The Empire had always been one of order and inward-focused harmony. Warrior-forms were created only as-needed to deal with external foes, and not replaced after the war once their programmed lifespans had been reached. Yet the First War against the UNSC had necessitated the creation of far more warrior-forms than the Empire had ever needed before. The warriors of the Empire—” he looked meaningfully around the room, “— the Loroi, were forming a new power base, whether they realized it or not.

“The Soia Council saw that they would soon be eclipsed in de-facto influence, and that Tempest might act to seize more power over the Empire’s administration than they were prepared to cede. And they felt that the UNSC was close enough to beaten that they had no further pressing need for her leadership. Or her survival.”

The Colonel drew in a deep breath. “And so they betrayed her. Ambushed her in secret, stripped her of her Name, her Titles, her Command... and hurled her from the airlock of her own flagship.”

Fireblade exchanged a brief, focused thread of thought with Beryl. This… did match the broad strokes of the Legend of Tempest that they had always known, thus far. Could it be that—?

“She was meant to die, to disappear so suddenly and completely that the warriors under her command would suspect nothing. With human forces having carried out assassinations of Empire officials before, and UNSC raider teams recently present in the very system that she had been patrolling, it would have been simple enough for the Soia to blame us, the hated aliens, for her demise.”

He drew his shoulders back, eyes tracking around the room. “Instead, we 'found' her. A special forces team was… in close proximity at that moment. We recovered her alive, sustained for hours in vacuum by her sheer fury and burning desire for revenge. Revenge which we were happy to give her. She sent the story of her betrayal far and wide throughout the Empire, the truth of her memories impossible to deny. Everywhere, warriors turned their weapons on their commanders, on the Soia leaders who feared their growing influence in their ‘ordered’ society.”

Fireblade was horrified, both at the thought of the Soia betraying the Loroi, and at the thought that they were in a position to be able to do it.

Stillstorm spoke now, voice sharp. “Your story grows ever less plausible. I will not accuse you directly of… fabricating, but you must provide corroboration of these revolutionary claims.”

For several solon the two stared back and forth, engaged in a battle to see who flinched first. Eventually, Colonel Jardin narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly as if to himself.

And then, suddenly, he was present. His lotai disappeared, and every loroi present dove into the rich tapestry of thoughts which wove between, into and around each other.

Immediately, Fireblade made a shocking realization. The memories which he pushed to the surface were not framed from an alien point of view: they bore the intertwined sensory-and-mind signatures unique to a Loroi’s sense of the world.

Immersing herself in them, Fireblade felt the elation of impending victory over the aliens she had been sent to subjugate. Felt the disappointment at being ordered home, final victory still just barely out of reach. Felt the pride of being selected for a once-in-many-generations honor… and the agony of the changes forced upon her body.

Felt the even-greater pain of betrayal, a spear plunged deep into her chest, dripping poison into her very core. The poison which paralyzed her, even as she was dragged through the halls of her own command ship, lined with the bodies of her daughters and closest friends, battle-sisters she had known for centuries.

Then the shocking plunge into hard vacuum. Drifting. Freezing and burning in equal measure as the void bit into her from the outside and her battered soul ate itself away from the inside.

Next, sudden enclosure. Air — warm and humid — rushing to surround her. Alien faces — the same she had hunted for decades — surrounding her and yet she could not move, could not speak.

One removed his helmet.

Younger, yes, his hair a deep yellow only barely tinged with gray, but recognizably Colonel Jardin. The rest of the memory faded away, only his hard face remaining as it glared down into her, unreadable. Time came unmoored as his face aged decades in seconds, lines tracing their way across his visage. Deepening. Sharpening.

But still Colonel Jardin. The man she came to—

His lotai slammed back into place, and loroi throughout the entire room jerked as if struck. Their shock was not only driven by seeing, feeling so deeply the memories of an honored ancestor, but also the dawning realization that those deeply personal memories were carried by an alien.

And there was only one known way to implant memories that strong in another’s mind.

Tempo voiced what they all now knew. “She was… special to you.”

Colonel Jardin nodded sharply. “She became so, yes.” His eyes hardened. “The Soia did not take this revolution lightly. They forged new warrior-beings out of whatever was at hand, twisting Laborers, Artificers, and even newly-found aliens into new forms. Hurled them against the Loroi and against the UNSC.”

He worked his jaw. “Thus began the Second War. Loroi and Human, forced back-to-back as the juggernaut of the Soia Empire bore down on us.” Jardin blinked rapidly, drawing in a slow breath. “We gave them Hell for nearly fifty years, on top of the forty-five of the First War. But in the end...” his breath caught. “They won.”

No loroi could think of anything to say to that.

“The Core Worlds were overrun. Glassed. Then Reach.

“Then Earth.”

Something in the way he said that name made Tempo flare with understanding. “Your homeworld?”

“Yes. It—” Colonel Jardin laughed hollowly, shaking his head. “For fifty years, telling you anything about it would have been treason. But now? What’s one more glassed marble among ten thousand others?”

Fireblade twinged in sympathy. What was Seren, besides one more depopulated colony among dozens?

But it had been her home.

Had Earth been his?

Tempo said, “Spoken words are insufficient to express our feelings at such… barbaric destruction.”

“I know.” the Colonel answered. A thin smile crept onto his face. “But don’t feel pity only for us. We didn’t burn alone. A NOVA-PLUS bomb isn’t as… elegant as glassing, but it sends the same message.”

“And Tempest?” Asked Tempo.

“In the last years of the War, we… fled. Project OUROBOROS ensured that something of Humanity — and the Loroi — would live to flee elsewhere in the galaxy, but we knew that the Soia would find us eventually. A few dozen evacuation arks and two ex-Soia moon-ships would not be able to do much against a Soia armada; we had to ensure that they would be… unable to pursue.

“Which led Tempest to reveal the location of a… 'Superweapon', I suppose one could call it.”

“A weapon?” Stillstorm immediately asked. “Where can this device be—” She cut off, radiating a spike of understanding.

As if he could receive her realization, the Colonel tapped his foot twice against the floor plating. “You’re standing on it.” He gestured to the room around them. “This Ring was a backup plan of sorts, made by the Soia. If they had begun to lose the War, instead of us. If any of their own Council had sided with Tempest, rather than against her.”

“What does it do?” Stillstorm asked.

“It empties the galaxy.”

Fireblade’s blood ran cold at the simple statement. Around the room, loroi glanced between each other and this alien, sanzai flying and biting like tolot.

“Explain.” Stillstorm demanded.

“The Soia were, first and foremost, masters of the higher energy bands of reality. Where the boundaries between realspace and Slipspace near each other… and sometimes overlap.”

“You have mentioned this ‘Slipspace’ before. What is it?” Tempo asked, sending a warning pulse at Stillstorm.

Colonel Jardin cocked his head to one side. “You have reached this remote system with no ability to travel faster-than-light?”

“Our drive systems are based on Soia artifacts that we have recovered, but no mention of a ‘Slipspace’ was found.”

“It is the English term; I do not recall what the Soia called it.” He shrugged. “No matter. Slipspace is the higher dimensions of the universe, a twisted region that beings such as we can only enter with much effort and at great peril. Both sides used it for faster-than-light travel… and the Soia eventually planned to weaponize it. They had discovered a method for dispersing raw energy itself via Slipspace, and constructed a vast machine for that purpose. This energy would re-enter realspace in an even distribution throughout a very large volume.”

His voice chilled. “There, it would disrupt the flow of electrical charge. Machines would stop working, transmission wires would go dead… and nervous systems would cease to function. Muscles would freeze, lungs would go still… neural tissue would become inert.”

“’It empties the galaxy.’” Tempo echoed slowly, horror clear in her mind-signature and bleeding into her voice.

Fireblade glanced over at the control console that Beryl and the gallen bastobar leaned against, fixated on the alien’s story. A quick mental pulse had them straighten up quickly— better to be careful with any controls on this cursed Ring.

<The gun pointed at the heart of the galaxy.> sent the gallen, horrified even as her caste-trained mind echoed sheer awe at the engineering efforts that such a device must represent.

“And Tempest?” asked Stillstorm. Alone among the loroi in the room, neither her tone nor her mental state betrayed any anxiety at the nigh-unimaginable scale of the horror atop which they stood.

“Was the only one of us who could activate it. Only one with Council-level implants could do so.” the Colonel answered. “I went with her, and my soldiers followed me.” Mirroring the Torrai Lashret, his calm voice gave not the slightest hint of unease at the mission of mass-slaughter that he had embarked upon. “We arrived here, fought our way aboard the Ring, seized the control center. Lowered its power to devastate only enough of the volume around it to ensure total coverage of the Empire. Then the Soia Council themselves arrived.”

Fireblade looked up at the ceiling above, her mind’s eye imagining the scale of the battle that had been fought in this system, hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Failed utterly to picture it.

“They were far from stupid, and must have anticipated that she would activate the Ring. But they were too late to stop her from boarding the Ring, too late to intercept her before she reached the controls. So they played the only card they had left.

“They challenged her to a fight, lowering their moon-ship’s defenses against in-system teleportation. Offered to meet her in single combat, one after the other. For her to sate her vengeance on them, rather than the Empire.

“An offer she couldn’t refuse. Not entirely.”

Stillstorm asked, “She went to fight them?”

“Yes… after starting the count-down timer on the Ring.” Jardin explained. “And insisting that she fight them alone. That we who had traveled with her seek out the shelter of the stasis chambers below this facility, the ones nearest the Ring Control Center.” He swallowed. “That I leave her.”

As strange as it was to see a male clearly aching because he had not been there to aid a loroi female in a fight, his pain was very clear. Even stronger than the bond between entwined lovers was that between warriors who had long fought side-by-side. And so perhaps if both bonds could overlap...

He drew himself upright once more. “From your explanation that nothing is left of the Soia Empire but scattered artifacts and half-forgotten legends, I know that the Ring fired as planned. From it having been more than a quarter of a million years since then… I know that she fell in that fight. Her final fight.”

He nodded, eyes hard. “But she got her revenge in first.”

“Yet some descendants of the Empire survived.” observed Stillstorm. “We Loroi — we modern Loroi — are from three worlds where our foremothers found themselves after the Fall of the Soia. After the Ring. The Barsam and the Neridi also lived past the Empire, as do a great many other species. This portion of the galaxy is not as empty as your Weapon would have implied.”

The Colonel shrugged. “It had never been ‘test-fired,’ for obvious reasons. Perhaps even the Soia did not accurately predict its effects. Besides, absolute devastation — burning a large portion of the galaxy completely free of life — had never been our objective. We merely wished to prevent the Soia Empire from remaining a cohesive threat.

His eyes were hard as he smiled coldly. “We succeeded.”

[Urist]

So, there's the deep-dive into the backstory, the seam where I welded the Outsider setting to Halo's setting.

And also a bit of foreshadowing...

[Snoofman]

I kind of like how you made the Soia seem like a fusion of the Covenant, Flood and the Forerunners. I also like the new idea that the sapient Soia-Liron species are actually Soia remolded into new forms. Kind of like the way the Forerunner Didact reformed himself. Love or hate Halo 4, but Didact was badass.

[Urist]

I wanted to make the crossover something more than the "Master Chief appears in [X] setting, what do?" plots that *so many* crossover fanfictions end up being. So by blending aspects of Outsider's backstory and Halo's backstory, I've made something that I hope ends up feeling like a cohesive setting that carries over many of the themes of each.

And yeah, Halo 4 was a mixed bag. I'm *much* more of a fan of the original trilogy (ODST is also great, Reach was good) but 4 was the last one that was at least 'okay.' And it will be a cold day in Hell before I consider Halo 5 to be canon.

*Anyways* this way, the Loroi get the "Good news! You *are* the direct descendants of the Soia. Bad News: The Soia were *not* nice people even by Loroi standards... and several of your Soia-Liron cousins are pretty much *just* as directly descended from the Soia." And yeah, a True Soia-form is pretty much on the same 'power level' as the Didact.

[Urist]

The loroi warband that had so eagerly stormed downwards into the “Soia Weapons Cache” earlier was rather more 'subdued' on their way back up. Sanzai was clipped, muted, even without the suppressive effects of the walls around them.

For her part, Talon felt like that one time she’d had to gingerly bring her fighter in with a leak punched through both her suit and cockpit, kinetic-dampening liquid all boiled away. It had taken a whole day before she could keep food down, and five more before she could fly again.

If her mind recovered from its feeling of bewildered unsteadiness now any faster than her stomach had then, she’d switch ranks with Spiral.

It turned out that there were ten of the aliens, now, once the rest had filed into the command center after locating Spiral and her team. The news that Spiral had gone with a group out in search of Talon and her two soroin was heartwarming, especially since they had not run into Shells along the way.

Although if their ‘first contact’ with the humans had been as fraught as it had been for Talon…

“You are certain that the Enemy will be unable to restore this anti-ship weapon?” asked Stillstorm. Talon’s ‘status’ as the first loroi to actually talk to these new aliens meant that she had been roped in to walking close behind the senior officers as they conversed with the human Colonel.

“Yes.” The alien raised one finger. “For one, they would need to override a software lock on the entire system. Software whose like has not been seen for a quarter-million years, from what you have told me.” he raised a second finger. “Two, even if they did get past the software lock, if anybody now tries to bring the main reactor tap online… the fireball would be visible from orbit. A catastrophic rupture of a slipspace linkage is the sort of event that devours starships.”

“That is comforting to hear.” Tempo said, as the group topped the ramp into the cargo bay, on the surface. “I do not know why the Enemy attacked you once they inadvertently deactivated your stasis-sleep, but I am not surprised that they did so.”

Colonel Jardin chuckled lowly. “They probably thought we were you, just like your pilot did.”

And how was Talon supposed to have known that the loroi-shaped warriors that rescued her were actually ancient aliens that just happened to look near-identical to them? She still had trouble believing it!

Apparently Tempo had had a similar thought, as she asked “Is it known why your species does look so similar to us? I can sympathize with the Umiak for ignoring the truly quite minor physical differences, especially in the confusion of battle.”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Parat Tempo. If the UNSC ever knew, they never told me. And if the Soia ever knew, they never told Tempest.” He snorted. “Not that people — on either side — ever lacked for creative ideas to explain it. I’ve heard everything from intelligent design to convergent evolution to ancient aliens. Nobody’s yet come up with an answer that sticks.” He paused at the threshold of the cargo bay, just barely illuminated by the sunlight. “And now? I doubt anyone ever will.”

The group made their way towards the distant, hidden dropship. Soroin fanned out to screen the perimeter, but Talon could feel that many of them were simply glad to put some distance between themselves and the scary new aliens.

For Talon, the sucking mud that had seemed so tortuous on the way in was now drowned out by the elation of being able to once more feel the presence of her sisters-in-arms clearly. No more of that cursed Soia metal forged into claustrophobia-inducing corridors that twisted to and fro, hiding each loroi from her arms-sister’s sight and mind!

She slowed her steps, dropping back from where the Colonel continued to speak with Stillstorm and the Mizol, and moved closer to one of the other humans. The only other human who it seemed could speak Trade properly… or at least the only other one who was willing to.

And frankly, the one who seemed most interesting to her. “Your Colonel spoke that you are a pilot, yes?”

“That’s, uh, right.” he said. “Ensign second-class Alexander Jardin, UNSC Naval Air Service.”

“And I am Tenoin Arrir Nesin.” She parsed his strange terms as best she could. “'Naval Air Service.' That is perhaps trans-atmospheric craft?”

“Mostly, yes. Whatever the Service demands.”

“And the Colonel is your father?” At least, she thought that was what the alien had said.

“Uncle. Dad is — was — in the Navy.” He looked over at Talon, face clearly visible through the transparent visor of his helmet. “I followed Dad rather than Uncle Pierre. Family tradition and all that. Besides, Navy dress uniforms look better than ODST grays.”

She looked up and down his own very gray uniform. It was slimmer and less blocky than those the other humans wore, but… “I think maybe there is little to choose between those two.” For one thing, everybody’s legs right now were gray-brown up to the knees from all this cursed mud.

He laughed, and repeated with a smile “Dress uniforms! You know, what you wear for formal occasions, not deployment. Unless that searing-orange getup is all you have.”

Now Talon looked down at her own armor. The armor of a Tenoin. The armor that she had been proud to earn, up until this— no, actually, she was still proud of it! “It is as ‘searing’ as the beams of our lasers!” She was far from a poet — had never even gotten to meet a poet, thanks to that stupid incident at her diral graduation — but she hoped that that sounded right. Spoken language was hard!

The alien’s smile shifted, now seeming more genuine. “You’re a stick-jockey as well?”

Talon’s mind ran through a few loops trying to create an image out of the strange phrase. Then gave up. “Maybe yes? I will be piloting the transport that we are walking to.”

“I also!” announced Spiral, jogging up on Talon’s right and looking across her. “I am called Tenoin Narrat Nonnos! I fly also, keep this tail-wag from breathing dirt into engines!”

<That was one time!> Talon sent in exasperation. <And what rot-sniffing idiot of a gallen put air intakes on the sides of a dropship, anyways?>

She also noted the… inaccurate assumption that her diral-sister had made about her motivation. <And I am only interested in what this alien pilot has seen and flown. Imagine alien fighter-craft, suitable for a war of the scale his uncle described!> She hoped that the honest enthusiasm of the second phrase would cover for the less-than-entirely-truthful side-bands that wrapped the first.

<You did not notice at all that he is a male, and also closer to… ‘right-size’ than his fellow aliens? You really are hopeless!> Spiral gave her a wink and a grin, before speaking out loud to the younger Jardin. “In cockpit is room for three, and rest of craft not so much room. Maybe Ensign will ride with us up front? Tell how ancient warriors flew fighters?”

For all her sisterly teasing, the genuine curiosity in Spiral’s voice and mind was clear enough.

“I… doubt that will be a problem.” Jardin responded, looking forwards at his uncle. The Colonel must have overheard Spiral’s suggestion, because he glanced back over his shoulder and gave a short nod, before returning to his conversation with Stillstorm and Tempo.

“Most fortunate!” Talon said. “What sort of craft did you fly mostly?”

“I was trained on bombers first. But by the time I got to the Fleet, they needed dropship pilots more than anything. So I ended up cross-training as a Seagull pilot while serving aboard the Hell by Compass. Four combat drops before I was assigned to the Furies; two more since.”

“’Furies’?” came another voice, as the group’s Listel Tozet walked up on his other side.

“Uh, ’Frenchie’s Furies.’ Formally, ‘Gamma-Six Heavy’. That’s us. Uncle’s ODST team, the best of the best of the marines.” He went quiet for a few solon. “They were put together out of the remains of a few ‘depleted’ squads for operation RED CARD. That was the mission to, uh… 'neutralize' a Soia leader, preferably Tempest herself. See, a ‘Fury’ is an ancient human myth: a fictional creature that symbolizes vengeance, and the bloodier the better. And they’re all women. So when Uncle’s unit put together a volunteer team of mostly female ODSTs to set out on what was expected to be a one-way mission, all for the sake of some very personal vengeance for the Outer Colonies? The name stuck, even when replacements started diluting the original team.” He paused for a solon. “Oh and, uh, ‘Frenchie’ was Uncle’s old callsign.”

“These are the same warriors that accompanied your Colonel and Tempest, later? And you said that these Furies were ’Creatures of vengeance.’” Beryl mused, fixing Talon and Spiral with a meaningful look before turning her gaze to the Ensign. “The nearest Trade term would be ‘Bedein.’”

Right, the Bedein that had been said to accompany the legend version of Tempest and aid her in her battles. The mythical, vengeful sea-spirits. Talon had always thought they were just a part of the story added to keep pre-diral girls paying attention, an untruthful exaggeration or — even worse — pure fiction.

...

Wait, was she talking to one of the actual Bedein right now!?

“I would know what means ‘Frenchie’!” asked Spiral, puncturing the bubble of seriousness that was threatening to envelop the conversation. “Also ‘callsign.’”

“It’s a play on our last name. The name is from a region of Earth called ‘France,’ but our family’s lived in northern California for centuries. Uh, those two regions are very far apart.”

“And so this name then is meant to be humorous? Insulting?” Beryl asked.

“A good callsign is usually mostly humorous. Only a little bit insulting, and I think Uncle got used to it decades ago.”

“Then it is like a diral-name!” Talon realized. At Jardin’s blank look, she explained “That is the spoken name given to a warrior by her diral-sisters. It is picked in first for the most not-proud moment of a loroi’s diral time, but also most commonly for a memory that is funny.”

Spiral added “It is most always replaced much soon by real spoken name at end of diral trials. But diral-sisters never forget name first given!” She smirked teasingly at Talon, sending her a quick burst of memories recounting each time that Talon had fallen off of that top-heavy death-trap of a boat their diral had built. “As example, ‘Plunger’ here secretly wanted to be submarine pilot, it seems!”

“'Seed-head!'” Talon shot back with a laugh, sending the image she had once managed to find of a pre-diral Spiral standing in a horizon-spanning field of misesa grain on her birth-world, eyes closed in an utterly un-warrior-like image of pastoral tranquility amidst the rolling hills.

Beryl interrupted the playful sisterly feud. “What is your callsign, Alexander Jardin?”

“It’s uh, ‘Fireball.’” he replied, sheepishly.

The three loroi exchanged confused looks. “That seems to be a complement.” said Talon.

“Its sound is fierce!” added Spiral.

Jardin grinned at them and explained, “Take it from me: always check that your Seagull’s afterburner hasn’t been slowly leaking fuel the whole time while waiting in a parking orbit during a mission. Type-F compound is both fuel and oxidizer. My crew chief made me reapply the paint to the aft of my bird by hand.”

The three loroi broke out into laughter, joined a solon later by the human pilot. He added “If you think that story’s good, try this one: My squadron leader at that time had gotten her callsign from her flight school days. She woke up in the middle of the night to a Highland spider crawling across her bed and onto the wall. So she grabs a hammer from her field-maintenance kit and goes at it; kills the spider but cracks a water pipe in the wall, hosing down the entire cadet dorm room at two in the morning.”

Talon nodded in appreciation. “A good warrior’s instinct. But… what is a ‘spider’?”

“Hold on, I’ve got a picture here.” Ensign Jardin dug out his datapad from a pocket and tapped at it for a few moments. “We asked her about the story once, and she shared this:” He held up the pocket computer, the three loroi leaning in to look over his shoulder.

A grinning human woman — and they really looked loroi-like without that bulky Helljumper armor on! — crouched in a thumb’s-width of water, lit by the flash of whatever device had captured the image. Held across her chest, just underneath a series of printed alien letters spelling ‘RAWLEY’, was a red-smeared metal hammer. And spread-eagled in front of her, completely flattened, was this… horrible bug-thing with spindly legs that must have been as wide as her arms could reach!

“Fascinating!” said Beryl. “It is perhaps in part like a large, exoskeletal beimish. Are they venomous?”

“Don’t know. I grew up on Earth and trained on Holdout, so Reach’s wildlife wasn’t anything I ever encountered outside of stories.”

Spiral said with a shudder “It certain looks like something Perreinid! Maybe this planet ‘Reach’ is now called ‘Perrein?’”

Beryl sent a cautionary warning, but it arrived too late.

The smile sagged off of the human’s face. “Well, is this ‘Perrein’ of yours a glassed, lifeless desert devoid of all surface life?” He looked at Spiral, who lowered her eyes and glanced aside.

Right… probably not a good idea to remind the humans that every world they had ever known was burned to ashes. Talon cast about for something else to talk about. These humans were strange, yes, from their loroi-like appearance to letting males of all people be warriors, but they were warriors. It was not right to make them dwell on past defeats.

Besides, every instinct in Talon’s mind was screaming at her to reassure the obviously-saddened male. “Well... it should be nice for you to see the interior side of a cockpit once more, yes?”

Now Beryl turned her attention on Talon. <You wish for him to join you in the cockpit?> Her sanzai was accompanied by an emphasis on just how little room there was in that compartment… and a hint of suspicion as to Talon’s motives.

Not her, too!

<He has already accepted.> Talon explained. <And it will be good for him to do pilot-things again, or at least see them being done.>

Spiral joined in <There can be room for four in the cockpit if you are interested...> along with a mental image of the Listel Tozet pressed up against the lanky human’s side in the cramped space behind the crew seats.

Talon quickly repeated <We really do just want to hear how an alien pilot thinks, how he does things.> Her sanzai would convey her honesty… at least as to her own motives.

Her diral-sister appended <And maybe later he can show us other things!> Thankfully she didn’t include any mental images with that sending, but it was impossible to miss Spiral's laughter-lined — and as crude as a Donei detair abbess! — ‘implication.’

Talon knew Spiral well enough to feel that she was simply joking — well, almost entirely joking — but the flare of irritation from the Listel showed that she ‘knew’ no such thing. <You are Tenoin warriors, not diral-girls to be distracted by her first sighting of a male.>

Even Spiral seemed to have realized that she had overstepped a boundary. <There is no need to be concerned, listel tozet. I was only joking, with no intent to start anything dishonorable.> Her sending was clear, open and far more formal than was normal for the Maia-born ball of playful energy that was Spiral.

Beryl accepted the truth lining the Narrat’s sanzai. <See that you remember it.>

In the few heartbeats that their conversation had taken, Jardin had barely begun to answer. Talon took a moment to remember what she’d actually asked him aloud — how did aliens get anything done with verbal speech alone and no sanzai? “-ill be interesting to see what you’ve come up with while we’ve been, uh, ‘asleep.’”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Thruster intakes.” Talon called out aloud, for the human’s benefit.

“Clean!” Replied Spiral.

“Fuel mixture.”

“Optimal.”

“Flight controls.”

“Four-by-four!”

Talon ran her fingers down the control panel, toggling each system online. The comfort of routine helped distract her from the warmth radiated by the alien behind her, separated only by the thin backing of her pilot’s chair. Dropships were not exactly as comfortable as larger shuttles could afford to be. At least there was room for her to take off her helmet and set it aside — a luxury that only Tenoin veterans of far too many fighter-sorties would fully appreciate.

Spiral had, if anything, exaggerated: there really wouldn’t have been room for a fourth person in the cockpit, not without actually compromising the ability of the flight crew to man their stations. With Talon at the pilot’s controls and Spiral at the copilot’s station, that left the human standing so close behind Talon that his breath tickled her hair.

It was… not easy to concentrate her thoughts with the alien right there. Not really so much for him being a male as him being older than anything on Taben. He had asked only a few questions earlier and was now being politely quiet while she worked, but that didn’t help her nervousness much.

Maybe she hadn’t thought this invitation through all the way.

Carefully packing her thoughts away, she sent <Lashret, we are prepared for flight.>

<Very well.> came the instant reply. <You have the coordinates?>

<Affirmative, Lashret. Approximate time to arrival is eight thousand solons.>

<Then depart immediately. Inform me if any information needing my attention becomes available during flight.> She terminated the message, Talon catching only the faintest impression of the parallel conversation the Torrai was still carrying on with the senior Jardin.

Which was doubtlessly interesting as well, but Talon certainly did not envy any of the loroi packed gut-to-butt in the troop bay. Between the original cargo, sixty loroi — of whom five were injured and needed more space — and now ten humans, the dropship was loaded well beyond what it had been sized to carry. Fortunately only in volume rather than mass, which simplified Talon’s job as pilot.

The Hydra lifted off, thruster wash blasting plumes of mud high into the air as the camouflage nets retracted into their mountings atop the fuselage. Angling the engine nacelles forwards, the Hydra slowly accelerated forwards, staying low and slow just above the treeline. They should be all-but-impossible for the Shells to notice, but especially now with their new passengers Talon was not going to take chances.

Once the craft had reached a comfortable cruising state, Talon turned her head slightly to one side and asked “Perhaps maybe it seems similar to that craft you mentioned flying?”

“UNSC Seagulls. They’re a good bit smaller and more nimble, but couldn’t fit quite all the people you’ve got crammed in down below.” He chuckled. “Or up here.”

The dropship rounded a tall mountain — even with what she’d recently learned about the Soia, she had to respect their dedication to aesthetics: such beautiful nature… on a superweapon? — and dove down to skim the sea in front of them.

A thin bead of sweat crept down the back of Talon’s scalp, slipping underneath her suit's inner lining. The Hydra’s thermal dissipaters and radar absorbent design should keep them off of Shell sensors, but against the solid backdrop of the ocean there was minimal ground clutter for their reduced — but not entirely gone! — signature to hide in.

Ensign Jardin didn’t seem to be worried, as he looked out of the side of the cockpit window. “Whatever ship that was that we shot down sure lit up a lot of places.” Talon briefly glanced aside, noting the plumes of smoke rising from the impact sites of Tempest’s wreckage.

Then the exact wording that the alien had used hit her.

“’You’ shot down?” She asked, now glad of the distraction. A mirroring spike of consternation radiated from Spiral.

“The Bugs — ‘Shells,’ you called them — woke us up when they were searching down into the cryo bays. The ODSTs pushed them back and went hunting, and discovered that the STO firing systems were online… and that they were tracking this large alien destroyer barreling in, headed right for us. Looked pretty beat up; the Bugs must have engaged it already. The Bugs were evacuating the facility just as fast as their four legs could carry them. We saw that we couldn’t get clear of the splash zone in time, so we trained the gun on the ship and held down the trigger. Burned it off-course while we ran back down to the lower levels to play it safe, wait out the impact.” He turned his head to look down at Talon. “Whose ship was that?”

“Ours.” Talon ground out, but her brief flare of anger dissipated almost immediately. The humans had had no way of knowing that Spiral’s shuttle was leaving Tempest’s wreck just as they fired; the crash and all the events since could not be held against them.

“Oh. Hell, I’m sorry to hear that, but she was headed right for us. We didn’t recognize it as a loroi craft.”

“Crashing into that weapon of yours was the idea.” Talon explained. “The ship had already been hit by that cannon when the Shells were controlling it and was too crippled to leave the system, so Lashret Stillstorm set him on a collision course for the weapon’s firing point.”

“Good improvisation. And ‘Stillstorm’ is your commander? Red armor, blue hair, doesn’t smile?”

“That is she!” Spiral said, adding in private sanzai to Talon <Definitely her!>

“Huh. Can’t blame her for looking so angry. I’d be pissed too if my ship had gotten shot out from underneath me.”

Talon chuckled, and broke into a soft laugh. A quick glance upwards showed Jardin looking back at her, eyebrows raised. She explained “The ship was named Tempest. I think maybe you can guess for whom it was named?”

“Huh.” After several solon of his face frozen in shock, the human shook his head with a wry grin. “Small universe, I guess.” He snorted. “But I am not going to be the one to tell uncle Pierre that he shot down ‘Tempest’.”

“That is to be the mizol’s duty!” said Spiral, from her seat facing off to the side. The two tenoin shared a laugh, but Jardin didn’t join. Did the loroi even have mizol equivalents, back in his era?

Perhaps not; the alien did not seem to get the joke. Indeed, when he spoke next his voice was serious. “She would have been proud to know that her memory lived on, applied to a warship.”

For several solons, there was silence.

“What was she like?” asked Talon. She’d only been to the Vortex-class’s bridge twice, but she certainly remembered the imposing mural just outside of it. To think that this alien leaning above her had actually known the fierce-looking loroi…

Jardin didn’t answer for several solon, and Talon hoped that the question hadn’t fished up an unhappy memory. “She was, uh, intimidating. I knew she had never been a very ‘nice’ person — she’d been the foremost warrior of the Soia Empire, of course, long before I was born — but the Wars had… 'sharpened' her.”

So much for that hope. “But she and your uncle were pair-bonded. And he seems to be not so bad, himself.”

Jardin snorted. “He's good at hiding it. He was ONI before he was transferred to the ODSTs after the raid that ended up ‘rescuing’ Tempest. Uncle Pierre hasn’t told me about most of the things he did during the First War, but… I’ve heard the stories. I suspect he and Tempest saw something of themselves in each other.”

“That is not uncommon for warriors of many years.” Talon agreed somberly. “It is unusual for it to be female and male, but maybe this is not so for humanity?”

“The UNSC didn’t have the luxury of caring what dangled between a soldier’s legs, as long as they could hold a rifle or crew a ship.” He made a peculiar snapping noise with his fingers. “Uh, of course, you wouldn’t know. To put it briefly, human men and women are about equal parts of the species. Men are physically stronger and more aggressive, but those differences don’t matter much compared to any of the combatants the Soia engineered.”

And Talon was one of those ‘combatants that the Soia engineered’. That thought was… less reassuring than it would have been only a day ago.

But on that note… “Your uncle said something earlier that I wish to know more of.” Talon wracked her mind for the human’s exact wording, but she was certainly no listel. “I think he said that only the Soia had ‘mind powers.’ Were loroi of that era in truth not able to use sanzai?” The thought was… uncomfortable.

“From what I know, yes.” He replied. “Keep in mind that this was all decades before I was born. But the history vids all say — and Uncle agreed, when I asked him — that the Soia had created their warriors, their loroi, to be soldiers. Not commanders, not uh, ‘leaders’ at any meaningful scale. The ability to send messages between minds, and especially to read minds and affect them, was only granted to those that had been elevated to Soia form.

“A few loroi were built with the ability to manipulate higher-physics interactions; almost all of them were kept as the personal Guards of the Soia themselves.” He paused for a moment. “I’ve been meaning to ask – two of the loroi in your group here wear what look a lot like amplifiers. Are there modern loroi who have such powers?”

Talon quickly sent a summary of the recent parts of the conversation to the Mizol Parat. It was far above Talon’s rank to choose how much to tell this alien.

<That is safe to explain, Tenoin Arrir.> responded Tempo.

“Yes. There are the Teidar and Mizol castes, who can manipulate objects at a distance with their mind.”

“Excellent. Looks like Halsey was wrong, for once.” 'Satisfaction', of all things, was clear in his voice. “The Doc was never exactly sure if the modifications would stay effective across enough generations. But if they still work after a quarter-million years, I think we can call it a success.”

“The Teidar were engineered? By humanity?” Talon wasn’t sure she wanted to be the one to tell the imposing red-haired teidar down in the troop bay that particular bit of history.

“Uh, no, almost entirely by Tempest. But she was helped by the best minds the UNSC had left. We, uh, had our own ‘bio-augmentation' programs during the Wars.” He let out a small sigh. “I don’t think any of them are left, not anymore. Guess the Helljumpers won that contest by default.”

Talon frowned at the cryptic remark, but the Ensign did not elaborate. They were less than a thousand solons out from their target point, anyway. And dalid had shone upon them: no Shell contacts spotted ahead. “Is there a specific spot on this island that you wish to go?”

He took a moment to respond; maybe without sanzai the shift in the conversation was surprising to him? “Yeah, uh… the hangar’s built into a cliff face, the one closest to the nearer rim of the Ring.”

“And you think that your ship will still be able to work after all this time?”

Jardin chuckled. “Give the Soia a bit of credit, here — they didn’t only build stasis chambers sized for people.”

Talon and Spiral exchanged a shocked flurry of sanzai. “That is very impressive.”

“The Soia were… well, let’s just say that they almost earned the right to be as arrogant as they were.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The cliff face was… completely unremarkable. “You are most certain that it is here?”

“Yes. You’ll need to transmit the code on the right frequency for the facility to open up.” Jardin leaned further over her, looking down at the pilot’s console. Paused. “...of course, it’s base-8. Never could wrap my mind around that system.” He sighed. “Here, this will be faster.”

Before Talon could ask, his mind suddenly blazed into being, easily detectable at near-touching distance. It made the cockpit feel both more and less crowded at the same time: less crowded because he no longer felt like an inert bulkhead wall pressed against her back, and yet more crowded because she could now also feel his awareness of just how close-together the two of them were. How the tips of her hair tickled his chin as he leaned over, and—

She blocked out as much as she could, and focused on entering the commands at the forefront of his mind — not the ‘exotic’ color of her hair! — into the dropship’s communications system.

Perhaps it was better that these humans normally kept their personal lotai-machines engaged. Their minds were chaotic compared to a normal, healthy loroi mind. Thoughts flying everywhere, jumping to the fore one moment and disappearing the next. Especially those thoughts that any good warrior would keep well-buried during duty. Although perhaps a male would not...

“Code entered and sent.” Talon confirmed, thankful that vocal speech was easier to keep steady than was sanzai. “No immediate response.”

“Give it a few solons.” Jardin said, lotai thankfully sliding back into place. “The machine’s older than any city in your Union, after all.”

While they waited, Talon asked “If I may be told, how did humanity develop your lotai-machine?”

Jardin was silent for several solon. Just when Talon began to think that the alien wouldn’t answer, he chuckled and spoke “It’s another gift from Tempest. A gift to herself, really, more than anything. She said she got tired of having to block out the uh, ‘disordered thoughts’ of everyone around her. Spent months tinkering with amplifiers and a spare set of neural lace implants before she got it to work. Now she demands — demanded — that anyone working near her has to have a set installed.”

Talon could see the appeal. The flight over would have been quite awkward, if she’d had to spend the whole time blocking out some of the thoughts which she’d faintly perceived lurking underneath Ensign Jardin’s conscious mind. What was ‘vanilla’ anyways?

“Did you not say that she was a Warrior, not an Artificer?”

“Before she was elevated to Soia-form, yes. Afterwards, it didn’t really matter. Council Soia are a rule unto themselves; they got the works when it came to the Empire’s best enhancements, both physical and mental. There’s really not much that they can’t figure out, if they set their mind to it. And—” he cut himself off, as the cliff face in front of their hovering craft split open horizontally. “Ah, there we go.”

At first, Talon thought that the cavernous bay within was empty. Everything was shadows, even as the light poured in from the side.

She frowned. There were shadows lurking even where nothing stood to cast the shadow.

“Be careful moving us in.” Jardin advised. He dropped his lotai once more, and carefully ‘pushed’ — it seems humans could not actively send, sadly — the outline of the craft within to the forefront of his mind, easy to read. With that aid, Talon could suddenly resolve the outline of the deep-black ship. “That’s very irreplaceable ONI technology. UNSC Did Ever Plummet Sound. Refit Winter-class light prowler, and our ticket out of here.”

There was — barely — room in the hangar to set the dropship down off to the side. Set against the rounded bulk of the loroi craft, this ancient human vessel’s sharp, sleek lines gave it a predatory look. Talon recalled Colonel Jardin’s mention of ‘ONI deep-strike teams’ that had so terrified the Soia Empire that they recalled their foremost warrior to hunt them down. Neither human had explained just what this ‘ONI’ caste was, but from the descriptions of how they had devastated the Soia worlds and habitats, Talon could make a guess.

And this ship looked exactly like what she felt such warriors — no, such Bedein — would ride into battle. A ship built not for War… but for Revenge.

Talon and Spiral ran through the post-landing checklists, one corner of their minds tracking the flurry of sanzai that raced to and fro through the dropship as the other loroi exited and saw the vicious-looking human vessel. All agreed with Talon’s first impression.

Ensign Jardin left while the two tenoin were still finishing the shut-down procedures. The cockpit felt much larger and less crowded… and also noticeably colder.

Spiral’s flash of playful humor gave Talon only a brief warning before her diral-sister sent to her <One always feels cold and empty when morning comes and the male leaves your bed. Well, sometimes cold and pleasantly full. You’ll learn when—>

Talon’s thrown hair-comb bounced off of Spiral’s shoulder, and the sanzai cut off with a mental laugh. <Not. Helping.>

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Colonel Jardin’s tour of the preserved craft was over much sooner than Stillstorm had anticipated. “There are no further compartments to this vessel?” She asked, even as her mind confirmed that the interior volume she had seen did match the observed exterior. As hard as that had been to observe.

“Prowlers aren’t made for comfort, Lashret.” the human answered, even as his fellow ODSTs filed past the two of them as they stood on the boarding ramp. “They’re made for absolute stealth. I can guarantee that these ‘Shells’ of yours won’t see a thing on our way out of the system.”

“We are placing our lives in your hands.” Stillstorm added. Of course, their lives had been forfeit the moment that the shuttle was crippled by its collision with Tempest. Even if the ancient craft exploded upon liftoff, nothing further would be lost.

“I am placing the surviving human species aboard this ship.” he retorted.

The alien did have a point... if one felt like being charitable.

Stillstorm had been accused of many things over her long career; an excess of charity was not among them. “My personnel will finish boarding within five-hundred solon. Will your pilot be at ready by that time?”

“I didn’t pick him because he’s my nephew; I picked him because Alexander’s the best in the UNSC. That’s not as much of a complement as it used to be, but he’ll have us in the air not a moment after your girls are aboard.”

Stillstorm was about to retort, when the Emperor’s Chain sent an admonition at her. Leading the Colonel aside, Tempo said “A loading operation which will complete faster with us not standing in the middle of the boarding area.”

Swallowing her irritation, the Torrai walked after them, making a point of turning aside from their continued conversation and surveying the loroi as they moved cargo aboard the ‘prowler.’ The human craft had some more room aboard the corvette-sized ship than had been found within the dropship, but it would still be a cramped journey. At least the bulky Type-A fuel canisters would only be with them for a short part of the journey.

“Cranky, isn’t she?”

Stillstorm bristled at the observation, murmured though it was. Life had given her little reason to be happy, and fewer still to be friendly. Especially not after the collapse of the Semoset Offensive. Not after—

“The Lashret is perhaps the best Strikeforce commander in the Union, and she is concerned about the impact that her absence will have on Strikeforce-51.” Tempo stated quietly what the underhanded mizol must have glimpsed even through Stillstorm’s best efforts to suppress her concerns.

Stillstorm jerked her head around, fixing Tempo with a slit-eyed glare. Only the fact that none of the other loroi were near enough to have overheard saved the Parat from more explicit criticism, Emperor’s representative or no. It was bad enough that the cursed mizol pried so into her mind; it was certainly not the devious prevaricator’s place to reveal Stillstorm’s thoughts to an alien of all things!

“Oh, I’m not complaining. I’ve lived with worse for fifty years.” the Colonel said to Tempo, while his eyes regarded Stillstorm calmly. His quiet tone matched the mizol’s, low enough that only the three of them would hear. “But if the warriors you left behind in your fleet are as capable as the ones I’ve seen here, they’ll handle things fine.”

Stillstorm raised one eyebrow. That was a clumsy compliment if ever she’d heard one: it had been much less than a day since the human had first met any of her subordinates. Nowhere near enough time to form any reliable impressions as to their competence.

The fact that they were among the best in the Union — and she’d have the hair of anyone who said otherwise, prohibition against dueling or no — only slightly lessened her irritation at the blatant pandering.

But the human wasn’t done talking. “No, I haven’t known them for even a day yet. But I know good troops when I see them.” She narrowed her eyes, mentally searching the void where the alien’s mind-presence should be. He couldn’t have—

Colonel Jardin quirked a thin smile. “No, I can’t read minds, either. The UNSC never figured out how to build that into humans, and Tempest wasn’t interested in helping. But I’ve studied your people for forty years of war against them, lived half a century more under the same roof as a hair-trigger loroi who could juggle corvettes, and I’ve led warriors of your species into battle on more worlds than you can count."

He nodded towards the dropship. “I've been watching your warriors since we left the STO control center. They’re good. I’ve trained better during the Second War — and killed better during the First — but not many. They’ll do fine, both these ones here and those left behind in that fleet which had the fortune to bring you here.”

Stillstorm glared down at the human for several solons. Counted to eight. Tempo’s sub-verbal warning washed over her, ignored. The arrogance of this mind-mute alien to speak to her as if she was a child being encouraged before she left for her diral! The sheer, unalloyed hubris of one who… who—!

Who had fought in a war that saw his species rendered functionally extinct. Who had led a mission deep into Soia territory and kidnapped a Soia leader. Who then pair-bonded with that same leader and fought alongside her fellow loroi in a second war, one that saw the total destruction of an Empire which had lasted two hundred thousand years. And who had only recently been told that his warrior-mate had fallen in battle long ago and without him at her side.

...

She laughed.

Threw her head back and barked her sheer amusement at the knot which she had tied herself into. If it took an ancient alien straight from the most destructive war known — now known — in history to put things in perspective, then surely that was just another spiteful joke of dalid.

The soroin paused in their work, several glancing nervously around the hangar as if expecting some imminent destruction or explosion.

Stillstorm fought her mirth under control and regarded Colonel Jardin in a new light. She raised her voice, just enough to be ‘unintentionally’ overheard by the loroi frozen in their work. “Your recognition of the competence of my warriors confirms your long experience with loroi.” Her gaze flitted to Tempo, who was still glancing back and forth between the Colonel and the Lashret, wariness writ large in her eyes and in her mind-signature. <It seems that you have met your match here, mizol. Keep a close watch on him while I inspect the preparations.> She nodded sharply to Colonel Jardin, and turned to stalk up the ramp into the ship.

Behind her, the sounds and muted sanzai of a smoothly-run work gang resumed. Good.

Those loroi who were not needed for the heavy lifting sat or stood in the corners and sides of the narrow compartments aboard, the awake ones meeting her with the appropriate sub-verbal sanzai acknowledgments as the Lashret walked past. It had been a long day for them all and so most were asleep already, in twos and threes watched over by an alert soroin sentry, blaster slung low at ready.

The standard shifts for catching much-needed rest while in a situation of… uncertain security. The humans seemed to be friendly enough to loroi, yes, but Stillstorm was perfectly aware that she and her warriors were not their loroi. It was wise to keep an appropriate level of caution.

She passed the ODSTs as they crowded around the armory, crisp nods of acknowledgment sent her way before they returned to servicing their weapons. If the listel tozet had still been awake, Stillstorm would have definitely found an excuse to have her observe; those small-arms were definitely something that the Union would need to learn more about.

In the corridor just outside of the cockpit was the ‘medical bay’ that the senior human had showed her: fold-out beds lining the corridor walls, human medic and loroi doranzer working side-by-side. Mazil-toza Desire neither paused in her work nor looked up as she sent a terse update to Stillstorm. <One knee injury recovered, now able to walk. Four wounded by blaster-shots: two minor and recovered, two serious. Latter two stable and recovering, should be conscious within three thousand solon and returned to light duty within two cycles.>

<And human medical technology?> Stillstorm asked, stepping carefully past the two mutually-alien medical personnel.

<Difficult to determine. This one here has said he is the equivalent of a doranzer field medic, not a senior specialist or surgeon. The tools I have seen thus far are stabilization and field treatments, not ship-grade surgical equipment. Impressive volume-sterilization projector and wound-stabilization foam, however. Will be of great use to the Union.> The doranzer’s sub-channels conveyed her disinterest in just how those technologies would be acquired, but also the critical importance that they were acquired all the same.

Stillstorm noted that topic for later, terminating the connection and stepping into the cockpit.

Well, into the doorway. The cockpit itself was larger than that of the Hydra dropship, but was still quite cramped with not only the human pilot but now three loroi present.

The two tenoin straightened up in their seats as the Lashret entered, and also sending their acknowledgment of her presence. The human pilot didn’t seem to have noticed the door hissing open.

“—ll reading five-by-five, green across the board.” the younger Jardin’s fingers danced over the console in front of him. “Reactor’s warming up; it'll be ready before we're through the checklists. Spiral, your console should now be—” he turned to the younger tenoin and paused as he caught sight of Stillstorm.

He nodded briefly to her and finished speaking to the tenoin narrat “Should now be in Trade. You’ll get to play repeater, forwarding anything important on the sensors to your friends in the back. And senior officers.” He turned fully towards Stillstorm now. “’Lashret,’ was it?”

His words were polite enough and apparently within the bounds of human military discipline, but Stillstorm noted a complete lack of the deference which her seniority and reputation typically prompted.

Yes, she could definitely see the family resemblance. “Correct. Your vessel can be set to present information in Trade as well as your own language?”

He nodded at the tenoin arrir’s seat. “Tempest liked to ride shotgun. Her English wasn’t the best at first, so Caliban wrote a translator mesh to sit on top of the interface modules. Haven’t had to use it in a while, but it’s still there.”

“And who is this 'Caliban’?” Stillstorm asked after she had parsed his statement.

“Uh, uncle’s assigned AI. Followed him — and Tempest — around everywhere.”

He referred to a machine as if it had been a person. But that was a question for later. “At what time will this craft be ready to depart?”

“Five hundred solon, to be conservative.” he replied instantly.

She nodded at that and looked to the two tenoin, one after the other. Forced a thin smile onto her face. “It is good to see that you three pilots can work so closely together.” Her simultaneous sanzai emphasized the point to the two young warriors. Stillstorm noted the way the Arrir’s eyes widened in first confusion and then surprise.

With a brief message, the lashret confirmed that she had sent exactly what she meant, and left the cockpit.

After all, one of her remaining concerns was just what these humans planned to do once they had rendezvoused with Strikeforce-51 in the next system over, or the heavier fleet still further away. They had worked with her loroi for now, perhaps more out of habit than anything else. After all, the loroi of the modern world, of the Union, were not the betrayed and hunted Soia constructs that humanity had been forced into an alliance with, nearly three hundred thousand years ago.

Once the humans fully processed that, what would keep them from leaving? From searching the wider galaxy for any sign of their exodus fleet that had apparently disappeared without a trace?

No, it was best that they found some… reason to stay. And the Colonel himself was proof that humans formed long-term romantic attachments, of all the strange things to build a society on. But it clearly was a strong pull to them… and one that evidently could be formed with individual loroi.

Would the humans leave, if their pilot had a personal reason to stay?

[Tamri]

It's definitely cool. Especially that it is (for now) regularly written. I hope it doesn't freeze at an interesting moment...

The idea is definitely good, and it’s especially good that the author refrained from introducing irresistible apocaptic bullshit, which, in principle, cannot be completely destroyed and will be a pain in the ass for any subsequent generations of intelligent races, no matter how many of them there are (I’m talking about the Flood, if that. Seriously, this thing is so OP that it’s basically unclear how to finally get rid of it...)

I'd love to see the faces of the Emperor and the Diadem when Lashret returns with such awesome news in tow...

[Urist]

Thanks! And don't worry about the story getting abandoned; I *finished* writing it 2 weeks ago, it's complete already. I'm just uploading it one chapter at a time. I've got plans for a sequel if there's interest in it, but this story itself is a ~130,000-word (19 chapter) storyline that I'm confident stands well on its own anyways.

And yes, I'm *not* a fan of the Flood for that exact reason. They were fine in Halo 1 (where they were essentially just escaped lab specimens), but the later games keep building them up as this unstoppable force that isn't really justified by any observable statistics or behavior shown in the games or books. They survive (and are a major threat) mainly through authorial fiat, which is always irritating for readers that don't find them all that cool.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the story as it gets uploaded!

[raistlin34]

So, depending of how much they know....could it be that Shells have a VERY good reason to be pissed out at the self-proclaimed heirs of the Soia, and try to stop their expansion?

[Urist]

To be fair, even in Outsider canon Arioch has said that the Shells hold a *particular* ancestral hatred for the Soia, and that the way the Loroi style themselves as the Soia's heirs is a significant factor in making the Hierarchy hostile to them. Not the *only* cause of the war, but definitely one of them.

And in *this* AU, the Shells' relationship to the Soia is... *complicated.* But to say much more would be to spoil the story!

[Snoofman]

Before Tempest's rebellion against the Soia Superiors, were all Loroi against humanity at their superior's behest? Were there any Loroi during the Soia Empire that took pity on humans? Or kept prisoner? Or even kept as pets? Or were the Soia out to exterminate humanity completely?