章 44: Fifteen: Wandering for Eternity
It took about the same amount of time to rebuild Maethrillian as it did to construct the Greater Ark, at least a little because there were far more people to lay to rest. The bodies were cremated in the traditional manner of the people's respective rates, but no Durances were collected or kept; there was no reason to keep them and no one to keep them for.
But the capital was rebuilt, the Organon re-hidden, and the rest of the Mysterium's artifacts removed to the Greater Ark for preservation and study.
And then… they waited.
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'By the Mantle, I finally understand why even our ancillae go rampant if they have no stimulation! I'm dyiiiiiing…'
[Have they always been this dramatic?] John asked Nethalia.
'The Twins? Yes. Well, actually, I think they've gotten worse.'
The Spartan turned a thoroughly unimpressed stare in the direction of the Forerunners in question, but they just laughed. 'Humanity is catching, Commander.'
[It could use to be a little less catching. If you're really that bored, go help one of the others.]
Even he'd found something to do - in a manner of speaking. He was living "primitively" on the Greater Ark, in a small cabin in a valley, and it was unlike anything he'd ever known. He knew how to survive in the wild, of course; all Spartans did. It was part of their training.
But it was one thing to survive until extraction. It was another thing entirely to live off the land, to exist within the biome with no intention of leaving, to raise crops and livestock and make everything he needed. Spartans had been trained to fight, not this.
It had been a struggle at first. Even with the advanced society and technology available to him, he still had almost no idea what he was doing. There were failures in the beginning - there were failures in every beginning - but now he had a small but thriving farm. More than once he'd laughed himself sick wondering what the UNSC would think of him now, what Doctor Halsey and CPO Mendez and the other Spartans would think.
What Cortana would think.
Thinking of all of them always brought him grief, but her most of all. A UNSC AI's life was so short, even compared to an ordinary human's. Just a few years, and they would shut down - would die of "suffocation" on information, or be killed before they could hurt themselves or others. And it was so clinical - 'final dispensation'. As if it was just replacing equipment.
(no, we didn't date. technically she wasn't even an ex-girlfriend. but she was an ex-something, an ex-maybe.)
(an ex-almost.)
Our wife.
John jolted from where he'd been leading his aurochs out to pasture. The Flood had been silent - almost ominously silent - for so long that he'd almost forgotten it had a voice of its own. What? What did you say?
Our wife, it repeated, There was no ceremony, no vows, but she was still our wife, and we her husband. Was there ever anyone else we had such a close bond with, even among the other Spartans? Was there ever anyone else we so trusted that we were willing to hang the fate of all humanity on just their word? And after only three months of knowing them?
That made John stop dead and straighten up, signaling the aurochs to shuffle past him into the pasture.
Had it really only been three months?
He counted back. They were first introduced on August 29, 2552… and he left Earth on November 17 of that same year with the opening of the Portal. He had made the decision to listen to the message she left, and then follow Truth through to the Ark. They had spent nearly a month in Slipspace to reach the Lesser Ark. The Raid on Zero-Four-B (Zero-Eight?) took place on December 11.
August 29 to December 11. Three months, thirteen days. Even including the temporal anomaly on the Ascendant Justice, it wasn't much more than three months, twenty days.
(Earth is all we have left. You trust Cortana that much?)
(Sir. Yes, sir.)
If not our wife, then at least our life partner. We are not like others, even in our own Hive - we love only once. There will be no other.
John stumbled away. His back found a fence post, and he followed it to the ground, chest tight, breaths shaky.
For the first time in thousands of years, he felt tears roll down his face.
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The Saavaasi were the first to refer to her as "Her Grace, Lady Cortana" after that. She had no official military rank, so they went with royalty instead.
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John couldn't stay. Spartans were trained to act when they had intel - but there was no acting on this intel. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. Nothing that would make this better.
He left the Ark behind. Ferial took over his land, mostly to turn his garden into a poisoner's nook, but she promised to take care of his farm as well. So he took Audacity and set out to do something - anything - to keep himself from focusing on his grief to the exclusion of all else.
(They briefly went looking for the Forerunners who had departed, and the enemy Flood. There was no sign of the latter, only the long dead remains of the former, with messages left behind indicating the Flood had been eradicated outside the Milky Way - but not when or where or how.)
Saying that the Forerunner ecumene had covered a large section of the galaxy was a vast understatement, but there were still places even they hadn't gone - or at least, hadn't recorded that they'd gone. With a small crew and the fastest ship in their fleet, the Spartan set out to map the rest of the galaxy.
They flitted through stars and star systems, taking scans and readings and charting everything they came across. The Milky Way was small compared to the universe at large, but it still contained hundreds of billions of stars that no one had ever seen and Audacity had fuel enough and a Slipspace budget to visit them all.
Well, maybe not quite that many, but definitely a lot. They brought back a ton of various kinds of samples from alien planets as well, from rock and soil to plants and animals, but they were careful not to make contact with any sapient species.
Not yet. They would wait for others to contact them.
**********
How I need you,
How I can't breathe,
Where have you gone
So far from me?
In this moment,
I can't fight for you and me.
Now I can't sleep, can't dream,
Wake up screaming -
Desperate, empty,
Are you listening?
Alone at night
Is when it hurts the most,
Living with your ghost…
-"Ghost", Eva Under Fire (Heavy on the Heart)
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