Disclaimer: Microsoft owns the rights to Halo, I do not. This piece of fiction is purely...
Vitiosus Penitentia (Halo AU) [REWRITE]
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Prologue
Drawlords
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Disclaimer: Microsoft owns the rights to Halo, I do not. This piece of fiction is purely fan-made and in no way endorsed by Microsoft or 343 Industries. I, the author of this story, am gaining no monetary advantage from posting this story on any website on the internet.
So, for the many unaware, I was originally writing a Halo AU by the name of 'Trial by Fire', but that died after I wrote myself into a corner and realised I was in over my head with the kind of narrative I wanted to write. Therefore, I'm doing a major rewrite of a major rewrite of Halo's original canonical story. I hope you enjoy, and I promise I won't let this die... hopefully.
Without further adieu, I hope you enjoy; and remember, all constructive criticism is welcomed.
Nueva Lima, Madrigal, Seventy-Five Kilometres below Sea Level
18th February, 2490
Baldomero Torres sat quietly, relaxed in his ONI-issued protective overlay as he monitored the constant feedback coming in from the deep-well mining drill a further one-hundred kilometres below his feet, digging dutifully, and without complaint day-in, day-out. He had a tedious and wholly uneventful job, but he knew the payout by the end of it would hopefully land him as a major name in human history, amongst the like of Tobias Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa, who sent humanity out into the stars just under two-hundred years ago - the drill he was currently monitoring, and had been monitoring for the past three weeks was digging down to a spot in the upper mesosphere of Madrigal where readings of an anomalous nature had been discovered. Heat, inconsistent with that of the surrounding earth in a specific shape that resembled a pillar, seemed to pulse rhythmically, and without fail three times, every single twenty-four hours, at the exact same time, in the exact same intervals. The scientific branch of the UNSC didn't know what to make of such a discovery, but more in-depth readings gathered revealed that the pulsing heat didn't corroborate with any other samples of Madrigal's mantle: it was made from an artificial material.
This discovery sent virtually all of the upper echelons of the UNSC and ONI into a frenzy, the possibility of uncovering some sort of alien artifact, working or not would push humanity as a whole into an entirely new mindset when it came to matters like the exploration of the Milky Way: the chance that other, sentient races could exist within such a relatively small area of the universe like their own galaxy was unabashedly astonishing. The UEG Priority Council, all the way back on earth had granted ENGCORP, the Engineering Corps of the UNSC and ONI Section One a blank cheque to utilise to the best of their ability in order to successfully burrow down far enough to unearth the artifact and bring it to the surface. With the operation in its fourth month, progress was being made at a steady and consistent pace - the director, Doctor Roderick Brandt estimated that the artifact would be uncovered by the end of April, and on its way to the inner-colonies by the end of the year; Baldomero agreed.
Born thirty-seven years prior, Baldomero had only left his homeworld after joining ONI, mere years ago: a lithe man, but after joining the UNSC five years ago, the general augmentations administered to all members of the military had taken to him well, boosting his height from just over six feet to half way to seven, and while his musculature had improved from what it was previously, it wasn't nearly as volatile in comparison to numerous others that underwent the process - lucky genes, he guessed. While Baldomero's intelligence had been at an above average level throughout his entire life, his augmentations allowed him to enter examination for admittance into the Office of Naval Intelligence, amongst the annual test group of some ten million others from across the hundreds of billions of people across all of human space, and, after graduating from the University of Cápac three years ago, he decided to attempt to pass the examination he had been proffered a year beforehand, and as fate would have it, he passed.
Placed into Section One, the intelligence gathering sect of the background organisation after excelling at both the physical and mental aspects involved in the test allowed Baldomero to travel through both the inner and outer-colonies of the UEG extensively, constantly training and investigating situations deemed too sensitive for local UNSC personnel to handle, sometimes simultaneously. While the stereotypes placed on the likes of Section One operatives were, at best, half-truths, there was many-a-time where Baldmero had to act with more than an ounce of improvisation; this amused him greatly.
While the current operation Baldomero was a part of was largely staffed by ONI, nearly all the expenses had been dealt with by the Minister of Scientific Development, head of ENGCORP and integral member of the UNSC Security Council, Doctor Shani Makau. With this shared responsibility between the two organisations, both parties were able to receive information gathered from the subterranean site and corroborate the findings with one another - the transparency involved in the potentially extra-terrestrial endeavour was paramount to successfully completing the operation within a reasonable time-frame. Frankly, Baldomero thought this cooperation a sight for sore eyes - having more than half the load of a usually extraneous mission being shared with the far larger and far more inclusive UNSC was less trouble he had to deal with, and the monotone of watching the drill was a welcome reprieve. He knew of course, that he was here as nothing more than a precautionary measure, a failsafe that, in the incredibly infinitesimal chance that the smart A.I. integrated into the monitoring station, Redwall, would malfunction and somehow be unable to operate or shut down the drill in a timely manner, would be able to manually take control and ensure nothing went wrong with the multi-billion credit operation that many powerful individuals were giddily waiting for to come to a close and reveal the big finish.
As Baldomero's attention slipped slightly from the heuristic, state-of-the-art holo-display that was really nothing more than a glorified monitor, he activated his own Holo with a distant thought, the translucency of the screen quickly dissolving into a more navigable opaque as his eyes imperceptibly shifted toward the small icon titled 'Video', placed in the top right of the currently half-foot square display emanating out from his left wrist. As the application opened in less than a second and automatically created a new session, Baldomero thought what he wanted to watch, and, immediately, the Holo began searching for the closest match to his desired preferences.
However, before the neurally integrated piece of technology could complete its three second search across yottabytes of data, the black-haired man of Peruvian descent was interrupted by the synthetic chirp of the station's main door, "Director Roderick Brandt has been cleared."
With a suspicious haste brought on by more than one reason, Baldomero closed his Holo and refocused on the much larger screen in front of him, moving around numerous windows to provide a system for himself that was both easier to read and navigate. Now, actively monitoring the state of the advanced military drill, he noticed an extremely overt and extremely worrying discrepancy - where the readings for how deep the two-hundred or so metre long artifact was should have said, at the very least, fifty-two kilometres, it read nine-hundred metres. For such a massive computational error to go unnoticed by Redwall for however long it had been was mightily disconcerting.
Before Baldomero could alert the A.I. to what he had found, Roderick, Baldomero's superior entered the room, "'Mero, hey. No problems you can see with the drill?"
Turning in his seat to face the relatively stout, German-born man, Baldomero let his facial features betray his worry as he spoke, "Actually no," the Peruvian in his voice, while not thick, was easily the most distinguishable part of it, "the depth readings for the artifact seem to be miscalculated."
With a curt tone and a knotted brow, the doctor walked up to Baldomero's station, "Show me."
"Here." Baldomero expanded the window containing the prevalent information and pointed the depth reading out to Roderick.
Bending at the waist and placing his hands on the silver-looking desk in front of him, the Germanic man let out a huff as he twisted his head towards Baldomero, his brown eyes taking up a large portion of his vision, "Has Redwall been alerted?"
Leaning back, Baldomero responded, "Not yet, I was about to when you came in."
"Do it, I'll alert Mariana, get her to check on Redwall, up-top should already know." As he said this, Roderick stood back to his full height of six foot eight and walked out of the small, immaculate room, calling Mariana on the radio built-in to the ONI overlays they all wore as the pressurised door sealed itself automatically.
Turning back to the screen, Baldomero nearly fell from his chair as he saw the depth readings once again: ninety-three metres - and it was falling. It was then that he realised that there wasn't error within the equipment, what he was seeing was the actual, correct readings coming from the drill. Activating the multitude of failsafes present within the drill, all of the systems within the machine were halted virtually immediately, and he realised that the depth reading was still declining. Amazed by what he thought must of been happening down there, he brought up the window which showed the heat and material signatures of the artifact, and found that it was moving upwards, directly towards the drill, as if it had a mind of its own. With widened green eyes, Baldomero shot out of his seat and bolted out of the drill monitoring room, running towards the main room of the rather small, underground complex, finding all six members of the team he was a part of coming around the holotable in the centre.
"Baldomero, here, now. Up-top wants us here when they send down help." Roderick's voice was imperative and laced with his own worry as he gestured Baldomero to join him and the others.
Nearly slamming into the side of the table, Baldomero let his eyes glide over what was currently on the holographic of it: a realtime 3D model of the artifact, the drill, and the surrounding upper-mesosphere of Madrigal was present, illustrating the phenomenal fact that the previously inert, and most definitely not-living alien relic had ascended through thousands of tons of rock and was now seemingly looming over the drill with its superior size, actually touching the man-made piece of machinery.
As Baldomero joined the rest of them, Roderick begun without flair and a heaving sigh, "So, in the span of less than ten minutes, the two-hundred and seven metre long alien artifact manages to push through over fifty kilometres of a planet's mantle, somehow knowing exactly where the drill is as well, and the artificial intelligence that acts as the primary supervisor of all of this station's systems, including the drill, becomes an unresponsive piece of military-grade soft and hardware. Up-top knows all the details down to the composition of the earth a hundred k's away, and they're sending down more personnel and more equipment to get Redwall back up and figure out what the hell's going on as we speak." His eyes skimmed across his subordinates, "Does anyone have any idea why this has suddenly happened? Because I'm completely lost."
With a quizzical look, Baldomero looked over to Mariana, the auburn-haired technology specialist on the station, "What happened to Redwall?"
With a hint of a Spanish to her voice, Mariana answered, "Redwall's become completely non-responsive to both external and internal stimuli I've offered him. It's like he's gone into a vegetative state - there's nothing wrong with him either, as far as I can tell. Until an actual expert in artificial intelligence gets here, there isn't much we can do."
"And that's a major problem," she continued, "this kind of activity has never been expressed by an A.I. of any mental capacity - dumb or smart - this is an entirely unique response, or lack thereof. We don't know the steps to take to fix it."
As Mariana finished her explanation, the synthesised voice of the main door reverberated across the central chamber, "Commander Arthur Cartwright and party has been cleared."
All looking to the bulkier entry as it swung open, a black man of a six foot nine height entered, clad in a similar overlay to that of Baldomero, but rather than an insignia that denoted ownership to ONI, an eagle, clad atop the earth was emblazoned over where his heart would be, proudly extending its wings out. As he walked forward to greet doctor Roderick, twelve ENGCORP personnel, faces cloaked by the visor-less helmets of the fully enclosed gun-metal grey power armour simply designated as 'ENGINEER', and carrying a myriad of differing pieces of high-tech equipment moved in groups of two towards each different room in the relatively claustrophobic sub-terrestrial station.
"Operatives," the commander began, "as I'm sure you're more aware than anyone, this enterprise has run into complications; because of this, my superiors believe that the relinquishment of command from you," Cartwright pointed at Roderick, who nodded back with civility, "Doctor Brandt to myself is an appropriate course of action. The ENGCORP personnel, also under my command will support all of you with your work due to the jump in the predicted timeline of the operation. Essentially, while the brightest minds try and extract the reasons why exactly what has happened, happened, we will be bringing the artifact to the surface."
Nueva Lima Artifact Site, Madrigal
15th October, 2490
A woman, six and a half feet high, with a face of impeccably sharp features, uniform grey eyes and immaculate auburn coloured hair that fell down around her jacket covered shoulders stood with purpose, eyeing the silver and blue alien relic that towered over everything in its vicinity with its astonishing height, accompanied by a maze of metallic support structures that ended with a military building at the base of it. After the artifact had been fully uncovered and brought aboveground, the UEG quickly went about furthering its involvement with the local Madrigalian government as the UNSC and ONI began to study it to even greater lengths. While it still hadn't been discovered how or why the artifact managed to move itself up through the earth, it was, at the very least, deemed safe to be exposed to the public to an incredibly limited degree. No civilian, without multiple levels of clearance was allowed to be within a kilometre of the site at all times. In less than a month, this solitary patch of land just outside Nueva Lima became the most protected place in the outer-colonies, perhaps even the inner-colonies, save Reach and Earth themselves. Even so, the Madrigalian government capitalised on this historical find; the local economy skyrocketed as literal billions of tourists from virtually every planet came to marvel at the first piece of alien technology ever discovered - Madrigal's newly found astonishing financial success technically classified it as an inner-colony due to its tourism industry alone. Of course, the woman knew all of this: she knew the name of every single military personnel involved in the project, she knew what city or town on what planet they were born on, she knew whether they preferred the afternoon shifts or the evening shifts, she even knew what each of them had for breakfast twenty-three days ago.
As the woman of perfect stature sipped her tea without a sound, still watching the behemoth of an object like a hawk as the ONI insignia on her jacket fluttered in the cold Lima breeze, a man, nearly a decade her junior walked up to her, resting his left, coated elbow on the railing in front of him and proffering his right arm towards her.
"Preston." The man said with a Midwestern American accent, giving a firm shake of the hand to the woman's surprisingly near-crushing grip.
"Good to meet you, Preston." The woman responded, a touch of Russian carried with the words.
Preston shoved his hands into his coat pockets, gazing at her knowingly, "So, did you come to look at the big, scary alien monument like the rest of us?"
She lightly smirked as she stared at the man, noting his posture and clothing, and managing to place the accent with moderate ease, "What brings an earthborn barely-there ensign to Madrigal, you have work to do."
More than slightly surprised at how well he was immediately read, Preston complimented her, "That was impressive, I have to say... Anyway, I'm with the Season of Plenty, we had some downtime, we were in the area, so the captain decided we could have a little R'n'R and look at the 'most amazing discovery in all of human history', as my mother calls it."
"You're rather cynical, Preston." She noted with a dash of sarcasm, yet with a completely straight face.
"It comes with the intellect."
"Arrogant, too."
"I'm young."
"That's when the arrogant die."
Preston inhaled through his nose, "Touché."
The woman nodded, and turned her attention away from the semi-bemusing young man.
"How far up the hierarchy are you?" Preston asked, looking down towards the ONI insignia on her jacket.
"That's not within your clearance, ensign." Her voice gained an edge.
"You have your own office at the Olympic Tower." Preston shot back.
"And you come from a poor family in Missouri." She responded in kind.
The two tersely stared at each other for a moment, before Preston broke the silence, "I never did catch your name."
The woman's narrowed ever so slightly, "That's because I never gave it to you."
"Mighty typical of someone of your stature, no?" He inquired with a sharp nod of the head.
"Being unique makes one stand out, ensign." She eyed him, "Remember that when you make a name for yourself."
Without seemingly acknowledging the woman's last statement, Preston pushed himself off the railing and nodded to her before walking off, "Good to meet you, spook."
"Likewise, Preston."
As the woman's attention fully returned to the monolith and lost herself in thought, an alert rang through her head, indicating she had a message - accepting the call, she responded with one word, her name, "Parangosky."
So, for the many unaware, I was originally writing a Halo AU by the name of 'Trial by Fire', but that died after I wrote myself into a corner and realised I was in over my head with the kind of narrative I wanted to write. Therefore, I'm doing a major rewrite of a major rewrite of Halo's original canonical story. I hope you enjoy, and I promise I won't let this die... hopefully.
Without further adieu, I hope you enjoy; and remember, all constructive criticism is welcomed.
Nueva Lima, Madrigal, Seventy-Five Kilometres below Sea Level
18th February, 2490
Baldomero Torres sat quietly, relaxed in his ONI-issued protective overlay as he monitored the constant feedback coming in from the deep-well mining drill a further one-hundred kilometres below his feet, digging dutifully, and without complaint day-in, day-out. He had a tedious and wholly uneventful job, but he knew the payout by the end of it would hopefully land him as a major name in human history, amongst the like of Tobias Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa, who sent humanity out into the stars just under two-hundred years ago - the drill he was currently monitoring, and had been monitoring for the past three weeks was digging down to a spot in the upper mesosphere of Madrigal where readings of an anomalous nature had been discovered. Heat, inconsistent with that of the surrounding earth in a specific shape that resembled a pillar, seemed to pulse rhythmically, and without fail three times, every single twenty-four hours, at the exact same time, in the exact same intervals. The scientific branch of the UNSC didn't know what to make of such a discovery, but more in-depth readings gathered revealed that the pulsing heat didn't corroborate with any other samples of Madrigal's mantle: it was made from an artificial material.
This discovery sent virtually all of the upper echelons of the UNSC and ONI into a frenzy, the possibility of uncovering some sort of alien artifact, working or not would push humanity as a whole into an entirely new mindset when it came to matters like the exploration of the Milky Way: the chance that other, sentient races could exist within such a relatively small area of the universe like their own galaxy was unabashedly astonishing. The UEG Priority Council, all the way back on earth had granted ENGCORP, the Engineering Corps of the UNSC and ONI Section One a blank cheque to utilise to the best of their ability in order to successfully burrow down far enough to unearth the artifact and bring it to the surface. With the operation in its fourth month, progress was being made at a steady and consistent pace - the director, Doctor Roderick Brandt estimated that the artifact would be uncovered by the end of April, and on its way to the inner-colonies by the end of the year; Baldomero agreed.
Born thirty-seven years prior, Baldomero had only left his homeworld after joining ONI, mere years ago: a lithe man, but after joining the UNSC five years ago, the general augmentations administered to all members of the military had taken to him well, boosting his height from just over six feet to half way to seven, and while his musculature had improved from what it was previously, it wasn't nearly as volatile in comparison to numerous others that underwent the process - lucky genes, he guessed. While Baldomero's intelligence had been at an above average level throughout his entire life, his augmentations allowed him to enter examination for admittance into the Office of Naval Intelligence, amongst the annual test group of some ten million others from across the hundreds of billions of people across all of human space, and, after graduating from the University of Cápac three years ago, he decided to attempt to pass the examination he had been proffered a year beforehand, and as fate would have it, he passed.
Placed into Section One, the intelligence gathering sect of the background organisation after excelling at both the physical and mental aspects involved in the test allowed Baldomero to travel through both the inner and outer-colonies of the UEG extensively, constantly training and investigating situations deemed too sensitive for local UNSC personnel to handle, sometimes simultaneously. While the stereotypes placed on the likes of Section One operatives were, at best, half-truths, there was many-a-time where Baldmero had to act with more than an ounce of improvisation; this amused him greatly.
While the current operation Baldomero was a part of was largely staffed by ONI, nearly all the expenses had been dealt with by the Minister of Scientific Development, head of ENGCORP and integral member of the UNSC Security Council, Doctor Shani Makau. With this shared responsibility between the two organisations, both parties were able to receive information gathered from the subterranean site and corroborate the findings with one another - the transparency involved in the potentially extra-terrestrial endeavour was paramount to successfully completing the operation within a reasonable time-frame. Frankly, Baldomero thought this cooperation a sight for sore eyes - having more than half the load of a usually extraneous mission being shared with the far larger and far more inclusive UNSC was less trouble he had to deal with, and the monotone of watching the drill was a welcome reprieve. He knew of course, that he was here as nothing more than a precautionary measure, a failsafe that, in the incredibly infinitesimal chance that the smart A.I. integrated into the monitoring station, Redwall, would malfunction and somehow be unable to operate or shut down the drill in a timely manner, would be able to manually take control and ensure nothing went wrong with the multi-billion credit operation that many powerful individuals were giddily waiting for to come to a close and reveal the big finish.
As Baldomero's attention slipped slightly from the heuristic, state-of-the-art holo-display that was really nothing more than a glorified monitor, he activated his own Holo with a distant thought, the translucency of the screen quickly dissolving into a more navigable opaque as his eyes imperceptibly shifted toward the small icon titled 'Video', placed in the top right of the currently half-foot square display emanating out from his left wrist. As the application opened in less than a second and automatically created a new session, Baldomero thought what he wanted to watch, and, immediately, the Holo began searching for the closest match to his desired preferences.
However, before the neurally integrated piece of technology could complete its three second search across yottabytes of data, the black-haired man of Peruvian descent was interrupted by the synthetic chirp of the station's main door, "Director Roderick Brandt has been cleared."
With a suspicious haste brought on by more than one reason, Baldomero closed his Holo and refocused on the much larger screen in front of him, moving around numerous windows to provide a system for himself that was both easier to read and navigate. Now, actively monitoring the state of the advanced military drill, he noticed an extremely overt and extremely worrying discrepancy - where the readings for how deep the two-hundred or so metre long artifact was should have said, at the very least, fifty-two kilometres, it read nine-hundred metres. For such a massive computational error to go unnoticed by Redwall for however long it had been was mightily disconcerting.
Before Baldomero could alert the A.I. to what he had found, Roderick, Baldomero's superior entered the room, "'Mero, hey. No problems you can see with the drill?"
Turning in his seat to face the relatively stout, German-born man, Baldomero let his facial features betray his worry as he spoke, "Actually no," the Peruvian in his voice, while not thick, was easily the most distinguishable part of it, "the depth readings for the artifact seem to be miscalculated."
With a curt tone and a knotted brow, the doctor walked up to Baldomero's station, "Show me."
"Here." Baldomero expanded the window containing the prevalent information and pointed the depth reading out to Roderick.
Bending at the waist and placing his hands on the silver-looking desk in front of him, the Germanic man let out a huff as he twisted his head towards Baldomero, his brown eyes taking up a large portion of his vision, "Has Redwall been alerted?"
Leaning back, Baldomero responded, "Not yet, I was about to when you came in."
"Do it, I'll alert Mariana, get her to check on Redwall, up-top should already know." As he said this, Roderick stood back to his full height of six foot eight and walked out of the small, immaculate room, calling Mariana on the radio built-in to the ONI overlays they all wore as the pressurised door sealed itself automatically.
Turning back to the screen, Baldomero nearly fell from his chair as he saw the depth readings once again: ninety-three metres - and it was falling. It was then that he realised that there wasn't error within the equipment, what he was seeing was the actual, correct readings coming from the drill. Activating the multitude of failsafes present within the drill, all of the systems within the machine were halted virtually immediately, and he realised that the depth reading was still declining. Amazed by what he thought must of been happening down there, he brought up the window which showed the heat and material signatures of the artifact, and found that it was moving upwards, directly towards the drill, as if it had a mind of its own. With widened green eyes, Baldomero shot out of his seat and bolted out of the drill monitoring room, running towards the main room of the rather small, underground complex, finding all six members of the team he was a part of coming around the holotable in the centre.
"Baldomero, here, now. Up-top wants us here when they send down help." Roderick's voice was imperative and laced with his own worry as he gestured Baldomero to join him and the others.
Nearly slamming into the side of the table, Baldomero let his eyes glide over what was currently on the holographic of it: a realtime 3D model of the artifact, the drill, and the surrounding upper-mesosphere of Madrigal was present, illustrating the phenomenal fact that the previously inert, and most definitely not-living alien relic had ascended through thousands of tons of rock and was now seemingly looming over the drill with its superior size, actually touching the man-made piece of machinery.
As Baldomero joined the rest of them, Roderick begun without flair and a heaving sigh, "So, in the span of less than ten minutes, the two-hundred and seven metre long alien artifact manages to push through over fifty kilometres of a planet's mantle, somehow knowing exactly where the drill is as well, and the artificial intelligence that acts as the primary supervisor of all of this station's systems, including the drill, becomes an unresponsive piece of military-grade soft and hardware. Up-top knows all the details down to the composition of the earth a hundred k's away, and they're sending down more personnel and more equipment to get Redwall back up and figure out what the hell's going on as we speak." His eyes skimmed across his subordinates, "Does anyone have any idea why this has suddenly happened? Because I'm completely lost."
With a quizzical look, Baldomero looked over to Mariana, the auburn-haired technology specialist on the station, "What happened to Redwall?"
With a hint of a Spanish to her voice, Mariana answered, "Redwall's become completely non-responsive to both external and internal stimuli I've offered him. It's like he's gone into a vegetative state - there's nothing wrong with him either, as far as I can tell. Until an actual expert in artificial intelligence gets here, there isn't much we can do."
"And that's a major problem," she continued, "this kind of activity has never been expressed by an A.I. of any mental capacity - dumb or smart - this is an entirely unique response, or lack thereof. We don't know the steps to take to fix it."
As Mariana finished her explanation, the synthesised voice of the main door reverberated across the central chamber, "Commander Arthur Cartwright and party has been cleared."
All looking to the bulkier entry as it swung open, a black man of a six foot nine height entered, clad in a similar overlay to that of Baldomero, but rather than an insignia that denoted ownership to ONI, an eagle, clad atop the earth was emblazoned over where his heart would be, proudly extending its wings out. As he walked forward to greet doctor Roderick, twelve ENGCORP personnel, faces cloaked by the visor-less helmets of the fully enclosed gun-metal grey power armour simply designated as 'ENGINEER', and carrying a myriad of differing pieces of high-tech equipment moved in groups of two towards each different room in the relatively claustrophobic sub-terrestrial station.
"Operatives," the commander began, "as I'm sure you're more aware than anyone, this enterprise has run into complications; because of this, my superiors believe that the relinquishment of command from you," Cartwright pointed at Roderick, who nodded back with civility, "Doctor Brandt to myself is an appropriate course of action. The ENGCORP personnel, also under my command will support all of you with your work due to the jump in the predicted timeline of the operation. Essentially, while the brightest minds try and extract the reasons why exactly what has happened, happened, we will be bringing the artifact to the surface."
Nueva Lima Artifact Site, Madrigal
15th October, 2490
A woman, six and a half feet high, with a face of impeccably sharp features, uniform grey eyes and immaculate auburn coloured hair that fell down around her jacket covered shoulders stood with purpose, eyeing the silver and blue alien relic that towered over everything in its vicinity with its astonishing height, accompanied by a maze of metallic support structures that ended with a military building at the base of it. After the artifact had been fully uncovered and brought aboveground, the UEG quickly went about furthering its involvement with the local Madrigalian government as the UNSC and ONI began to study it to even greater lengths. While it still hadn't been discovered how or why the artifact managed to move itself up through the earth, it was, at the very least, deemed safe to be exposed to the public to an incredibly limited degree. No civilian, without multiple levels of clearance was allowed to be within a kilometre of the site at all times. In less than a month, this solitary patch of land just outside Nueva Lima became the most protected place in the outer-colonies, perhaps even the inner-colonies, save Reach and Earth themselves. Even so, the Madrigalian government capitalised on this historical find; the local economy skyrocketed as literal billions of tourists from virtually every planet came to marvel at the first piece of alien technology ever discovered - Madrigal's newly found astonishing financial success technically classified it as an inner-colony due to its tourism industry alone. Of course, the woman knew all of this: she knew the name of every single military personnel involved in the project, she knew what city or town on what planet they were born on, she knew whether they preferred the afternoon shifts or the evening shifts, she even knew what each of them had for breakfast twenty-three days ago.
As the woman of perfect stature sipped her tea without a sound, still watching the behemoth of an object like a hawk as the ONI insignia on her jacket fluttered in the cold Lima breeze, a man, nearly a decade her junior walked up to her, resting his left, coated elbow on the railing in front of him and proffering his right arm towards her.
"Preston." The man said with a Midwestern American accent, giving a firm shake of the hand to the woman's surprisingly near-crushing grip.
"Good to meet you, Preston." The woman responded, a touch of Russian carried with the words.
Preston shoved his hands into his coat pockets, gazing at her knowingly, "So, did you come to look at the big, scary alien monument like the rest of us?"
She lightly smirked as she stared at the man, noting his posture and clothing, and managing to place the accent with moderate ease, "What brings an earthborn barely-there ensign to Madrigal, you have work to do."
More than slightly surprised at how well he was immediately read, Preston complimented her, "That was impressive, I have to say... Anyway, I'm with the Season of Plenty, we had some downtime, we were in the area, so the captain decided we could have a little R'n'R and look at the 'most amazing discovery in all of human history', as my mother calls it."
"You're rather cynical, Preston." She noted with a dash of sarcasm, yet with a completely straight face.
"It comes with the intellect."
"Arrogant, too."
"I'm young."
"That's when the arrogant die."
Preston inhaled through his nose, "Touché."
The woman nodded, and turned her attention away from the semi-bemusing young man.
"How far up the hierarchy are you?" Preston asked, looking down towards the ONI insignia on her jacket.
"That's not within your clearance, ensign." Her voice gained an edge.
"You have your own office at the Olympic Tower." Preston shot back.
"And you come from a poor family in Missouri." She responded in kind.
The two tersely stared at each other for a moment, before Preston broke the silence, "I never did catch your name."
The woman's narrowed ever so slightly, "That's because I never gave it to you."
"Mighty typical of someone of your stature, no?" He inquired with a sharp nod of the head.
"Being unique makes one stand out, ensign." She eyed him, "Remember that when you make a name for yourself."
Without seemingly acknowledging the woman's last statement, Preston pushed himself off the railing and nodded to her before walking off, "Good to meet you, spook."
"Likewise, Preston."
As the woman's attention fully returned to the monolith and lost herself in thought, an alert rang through her head, indicating she had a message - accepting the call, she responded with one word, her name, "Parangosky."