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| - "The Incumbent Wrath has stabilized," Fira reported quietly to the crowded shuttle bay. "The bridge was unharmed and Sona is still alive. A cruiser has already arrived to escort it to the surface for repairs." "At least we can take some comfort in that," Autel replied. "The crew did not die for nothing." No one said anything for a long time after that. Autel wondered if everyone doubted that claim as much as he did. They still had no idea why the Path Walkers had attacked and retreated so suddenly or how they had chosen the Wrath as their target. Even if they had been driven back from some objective, he and the other warriors had little to show for it. Only a handful of the Path Walkers and their dull-armored allies had been killed during the fighting; even the corvette that had harried the stricken Wrath had escaped without a scratch. His thoughts turned back to the warrior he had glimpsed back in the hangar, the one who had cut through his warriors so easily and even killed the famous David Kahn. So that was Shinsu 'Refum. He had fought the so-called Black Knight of Sanghelios once before, in the snowy Nisa Valley where he had helped destroy the Sons of the Preserving Blade militia. 'Refum had come upon him as he lay dazed from an explosion, but instead of killing him on the spot the warrior had tossed Autel back his energy sword and bid him stand to fight. Fira had interrupted before they could do battle in earnest, but after seeing Shinsu in action Autel was now convinced that had his friend not intervened he would not have survived that bloody day. Shinsu sought the destruction of Vadam in recompense for the death of Sesa 'Refumee and the slaughter of his clan. Such a simple, selfish goal, yet Shinsu had somehow rallied a sizable force of warriors under his banner. Word of the "Cleansing Blade" had reached the ears of Deno and his spies, but for now the only picture they could give of Shinsu's group was a shadowy band of killers who lurked within the depths of the underworld and made alliances with criminals, pirates, and all manner of other scum. And now they have joined forces with the Path Walkers. Autel could not understand any of it. Shinsu and Urei 'Cazal no doubt knew each other from their days together in the Fallen, but what did Shinsu have to gain from an alliance with religious fanatics? A larger force to bring to bear against Vadam? He will come for us, and soon, Autel thought with a shudder. It was not Shinsu's fighting prowess that frightened him, but the fact that this vengeance-bent warrior was an utter mystery to him. How could he fight someone he didn't understand? In the end, such doubts wouldn't matter. Autel would face Shinsu when the time came. They called him the White Knight behind his back; perhaps he was the perfect match to defeat the Black Knight. Autel looked over at Tuka. Fira had told him how the young warrior had refused Shinsu's entreaties to join him in his crusade when they had met for the first time back on the pirate world of Famul. But right now Tuka didn't seem the least bit interested in his brother's sudden appearance. His head was bowed low, his arms crossed in a sign of grief. The human who died, the one called G294, he was Tuka's friend, Autel remembered, though why such an unlikely pair would have considered each other a friend was a story he had forgotten. Fira and the warriors had reached an unspoken consensus to leave Tuka to mourn; Autel decided to follow their lead. Felix had retreated to the rear of the shuttle. His injuries clearly prevented him from donning his armor, forcing him to converse with his subordinates face-to-face. Right now he was talking to one of the two other Spartans who had accompanied him. Autel imagined he would have quite a bit to explain to his superiors, and now wasn't the time to discuss what had just transpired with him. He leaned back against a wall and closed his eyes. Right now he wanted nothing more than to go back to the Vadam keep, to hang up his armor and weapons and step away from all this madness and death. He wanted to see Cyla again, to see his children grow up without the fear of war and chaos hanging over their lives. I fight and fight and fight, he thought bitterly. We all do, yet our efforts only pave the way for more killing. He was a warrior of Sanghelios. The art of war ran through his veins, infused with the certainty of honor and justice. But what use were any of those things without the hope of peace to look forward to? He was tired, utterly exhausted by everything that he and his warriors had endured these past weeks. The ones who threatened our homeworld were utterly crushed. So why do I feel as if we lost?
*
* It was times like this that Felix was very grateful Spartans didn't have to worry about their careers. He looked down at the unconscious Rosch, still pondering how to go about explaining everything when the officer finally woke up. True, their mission had been accomplished to the letter. Kahn and Simon were both dead, though Felix suspected it would be some time before either body could be recovered from the debris field left by the Incumbent Wrath. But there was still the inescapable fact that he had brought them both as prisoners aboard an allied ship which had subsequently been caught up in an attack that had nearly cost the entire team their lives. And then of course there was Cassandra. And Nimue. He thought back to what Kahn had said about raising Nimue as his legacy. A means to bring down the Syndicate and insurrection from the inside. To fulfill his final mission. He wasn't sure how much of Kahn's story he could believe and now he never would be. The sight of the man who had come so close to killing him collapsing on the end of an energy sword would haunt Felix for some time to come. Kahn's only thought had probably been to save Nimue, but he'd wound up saving the rest of them along with her. Felix couldn't decide whether to feel indebted to the man who had once been Hector Thornhill or not. And G294... Zoey insisted Simon had gone off to prevent more of the attackers from reaching the hangar. If that were true, it was just as likely that he'd been killed by the Path Walkers as it was that he'd perished in the explosion. But that version of events seemed off to Felix, even with his limited knowledge of what Simon was really like. To have gone off on the attack alone against an unknown force was reckless to the point of suicidal. Perhaps Simon had hoped to use his A.I. to give him the upper hand, but the whole maneuver ran completely counter to the tactics the traitor Spartan was known to use. On the other hand, it made no sense for Simon to have done anything besides running for the hangar with Zoey. For all his bluster about hating the UNSC, Simon had not survived for so long by allowing himself to succumb to blind hatred. The best option open for him was to accept Felix's proposition, so why had he dashed off into the storm? Felix glanced over at Cassandra. She sat on the floor a few feet away, one hand resting on the shoulder of a sleeping Nimue. He couldn't read her expression through her helmet, but if the tears Zoey had shed for a mercenary she had known for a week at best were any indication then Felix didn't want to pry any more than he needed to. Perhaps Simon's sudden flare of altruism had something to do with her influence. But as with Kahn, they would never know what had been going through Simon's head when he died. THe traitor Spartan had left Felix feeling no more sure about his intentions than he'd been at the beginning of the hunt. At least now Daniel's death wouldn't haunt him so fiercely. Which brought him back to Nimue. The decision was as clear as day: the girl needed to go to ONI. Her very existence represented a colossal security breach and that was before he factored in everything that Kahn had taught her. If she were released now, they would never see her again until the damage she was capable of inflicting was already done. They'll dissect her, David Kahn murmured in the back of Felix's mind. You know they will. Felix looked away from the sleeping girl, hating himself for the brutal choice that was once again being foisted on him. He knew what Rosch would do. Hell, he knew what any other ONI officer would do. It was a price they had chosen to pay when they made themselves into shields for the rest of humanity. But I'm not Rosch. Felix flexed his prosthetic hand. And I'm not just another ONI officer either. He picked his way over to Cassandra. She looked up at him as he approached, but didn't depolarize her visor. It remained as blank and unreadable as the shuttle itself. "My promise still stands," he told her. "You're coming back to the UNSC. But it will take time, and until then you need to keep yourself at a safe distance." "OK," she said dully. "Where do you want me?" "Sanghelios," he said at once. It was yet another thing to ask of Autel, but right now it was the safest place Felix could think of. "I'll make the arrangements. But you need to do something for me in return." "What do you need?" she asked in that same husky voice. He indicated Nimue. "You said she was your friend?" She nodded wordlessly. "Then take her with you. Keep her close. It's the only way she'll stay alive, and if there's anyone who can keep her on the right path, it's you. Kahn put all of his skills into her, but it's up to you to fix what he started. Do what he couldn't: give her a future." The Spartan's helmet tilted down to look at Nimue. "He killed himself to save her. She must have been important to him." "She was his legacy," Felix said. "Or at least, that's what he thought of her as. He said she was every life he'd ever taken, every contract he'd ever fulfilled." She shook her head. "Then she was more than a legacy. Maybe that's what he hid it behind, but what he really wanted was to do more than destroy. He wanted to nurture, he wanted to raise, he wanted to love." Her words struck a cord in Felix and he was amazed he hadn't seen through Kahn's bluster before now. "All the things he could never do himself," he said quietly. "She was the only thing he ever had that wasn't an enemy or a target. The only person who didn't expect anything from him. Then all the talk about her becoming a great killer and fulfilling his mission..." "If that's what he told you, then it was a lie," Cassandra said, brushing a lock of hair out of Nimue's face. "If he really wanted that, he wouldn't have kept her with him for so long. He wanted to escape from the life he led. All he could ever save was this one life, but that was his real legacy. A life dedicated to saving people, not killing them." Felix allowed himself a grim smile. "I hope you're right about that. You know as well as I do that what Kahn really wanted won't matter if ONI gets their hands on her. Keep her safe, and make sure she turns out to be Kahn's real legacy." When he headed back over to Jian, Jake gave him a knowing look. Simon's death didn't seem to have hit him as hard as it had Cassandra--which hardly surprised Felix, given the circumstances--but his face looked exhausted, as if he hadn't slept for days. He smiled wryly and ran a hand through his stubbly hair. "So," he said after a few minutes of awkward silence. "How do you plan to explain all this to Rosch, sir?" "I don't know." Felix had been expecting this question ever since the battle had ended. The only surprise here was that Jake had taken so long to ask. "You're his agent, aren't you? How will you explain things to him?" Jake shook his head. "I'm not 'his agent' any more than you're 'ONI's agent.'" he said, but his tone was more reflective than defensive. "But he earned our loyalty, more than anyone else in ONI or the Spartan program ever did." He sighed. "Still, what he doesn't know won't kill him. It's just a damn shame the squid-heads grabbed Cassandra and Kahn's crazy helper after Simon died. That protective custody gig is really starting to get on my nerves." "Life's a bitch like that," Ralph agreed from off to the side. His face had developed a nasty bruise where Zoey had hit him. Felix shook his head, unable to hide a reluctant grin. "Better get used to dealing with customs like that," he said, looking up at the screen image of Sanghelios. "Something tells me we aren't done with this planet. Not by a long shot."
*
* It's up to you. Felix's words echoed in Cassandra's head. Give her a future. She shook her head, glad for the helmet that hid just how utterly incapable of living up to his expectations she really was. She couldn't live up to anyone's expectations. Nimue's grief had driven her into a deep sleep. Cassandra doubted she'd be awake any time soon, given the things she'd been through these past couple days. That was a ray of light amidst all this pain and darkness. It would be easier to explain things to her in a more tempered environment. She was so caught up in everything that had happened that she didn't notice Tuka until he had limped across the shuttle to sit on a bench beside her. She knew what he wanted to talk about and every fiber of her being strained to slip away from what was coming. But that was her job: to work past the pain so she could help others do the same. Tuka was silent for several minutes, his head bowed and mandibles tight. When he looked down at her, she saw that his eyes were full of suppressed grief. "I just can't believe he's gone," he murmured. "He would have liked that," she forced herself to reply. "He loved making people think he could survive anything." "So was it all an act?" the young Sangheili asked. "He always seemed so..." He shook his head, unable to find the words. "I always thought that if the universe ended, he would manage to be the only one to walk away." Cassandra had no answer to that. She had never been able to figure out just how well Tuka had known Simon or, to be more precise, how much of himself Simon had shown to Tuka. All told, Simon had given off that indestructible aura. She had seen it herself firsthand: no matter how often he had been cut down, humiliated, or brought low he had always dragged himself forwards through his own stubborn refusal to let the other person win. It had been that stubborn nature that had kept him alive against all the odds for so long. But she was beginning to realize that it had also been what finally killed him. Simon would never have let himself be backed into a corner like the one Felix had created for him. She had underestimated his hatred, not only for the UNSC but for anything he saw as yet another effort to be manipulated. She closed her eyes, fighting back the tears that had threatened to spill ever since Zoey had arrived at the shuttle. They had gone through hell together, tread the thin line between life and death together more times than she could count. Even when he hadn't been there, his shadow had still seemed to be resting against the wall, taking in everything with the same smug disrespect he treated everyone who tried to raise themselves above him. Don't apologize, he snapped in her head, as if he could sense the tears in her eyes even now. Never apologize to me. He had been a selfish, twisted ball of hatred and self-loathing. She had reached out to him so many times in the hope of saving him, and so many times he had rebuffed her with the same weak excuses. He was responsible for so much of her own pain. More likely than not he had simply lied to Zoey and died making a thinly-veiled escape. Cassandra knew all these things, understood them better than anyone else could even begin to. It was all plain as day, and yet... Simon had spent his whole life without knowing peace or any of the joys that came with it. The universe had never been anything but a constant battle to survive, and anyone who had ever shown him love or kindness had been stripped away by that endless struggle. He had endured so much, and even then he had still found it in him to give himself over to torture and slavery so she could escape Hekate, to help Tuka on Famul, to save Zoey not once, but twice. Simon had always thought that he was utterly despicable and had spent his life trying to live up that hideous image. But Cassandra had known better. There was no doubt in her mind that she had been able to reach out to the good that still hung on in that battered, agonized soul. And despite it all, despite his unending struggle and her own efforts to save him, he had still died alone in the darkness, cut off from any friend that might have been there to comfort him. And she had loved him. We both knew it, so why couldn't we just spit out the words when there was still time? But that time was gone now, gone forever, burnt up in the flames of the Incumbent Wrath. Simon was gone, and there was nothing to do but mourn. The tears came coursing down her cheeks now, trapped and hidden by her helmet's lifeless visor. Someone had to cry for Simon, for the person he'd been and the person he might well have become if fate had been kinder. Lord, take him into your rest, she prayed. Grant him the peace in death that he never found in life.
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