CFV-88, 1/3 - Arrival
28 April 3349
Uncharted Deep Space
Grif blinked into existence in a flash of PINpoint light... and floated. His arrival just a couple of inches above where he expected it to be, he found the corridor he was in to be just as airless and without gravity as if he'd PINned into space itself. Still, it was a corridor -- possibly even the right corridor -- and situations like this were what MJOLNIR was for. A quick alignment of his electromagnetic and gravity emitters gave him first a quick nudge down, then allowed the soles of his boots to attach to the deck plates, anchoring him solidly. His motion tracker and ARGUS sensors showed all-clear, but he kept his battle rifle at the ready anyway as he began walking.
«Halt.» As it happened, it was the right corridor, just a short distance from the Bridge. He stood at the doors to the Bridge now, in fact, but was stymied slightly by their being closed and sealed, with a glowing blue holographic woman barring his path. She had long dark hair and a severe demeanor, and her voice over the radio transmission had a crisp, precise diction whose accent he couldn't quite place. «Unknown presence detected. Identify yourself immediately or you will be considered a hostile intruder.»
One small part of Grif's brain wondered just what she could do about it offhand if he refused. The rest of him, however, ignored that, racked his rifle on his back and waved his arms a little. «Whoa, hey, no, easy, there. Scan my transponder. You should find an upload waiting for you with all the necessary creds and codes and stuff.»
The woman -- actually an AI, named Serina according to the information Grif had been given by his handlers -- looked at him skeptically, as though unsure if she should take offense at his tone, but did as he specified. It took her a few seconds for her to sort through the data that she'd downloaded from Grif's neural implant transponder, and as she did, she appeared to become increasingly concerned. «This... This doesn't seem physically possible.»
«Yeah, and if I had a credit for every time I heard that, I could probably buy my way out of the Army.» She didn't seem to know how to take that, but Grif waved off and said, «Skip it. Long story. Look, from what I've heard, the ship's still going pretty close to light speed, that apparently causes time dilation, and I've had way too fucking much of that, so could we possibly stop, and...» He looked around, suddenly unsure, and modified his next question. «This is just a power-saving measure for the crew in cryo, right? They're not all dead or anything?»
«No.» Serina shook her head, downcast. «We experienced some casualties in our last mission, but most of the crew survived and are still alive in stasis. Beginning deceleration procedures.»
Grif nodded. «Oh, good. I'm gonna head down to the Cryo bays, then. Figure it'll be best to start with the Captain, core staff, folks like that, explain things to them, and they can see about distributing that to the rest of the crew.»
«I'll meet you down there, then.» Now that she had things to do, Serina became more brisk and businesslike, although not so much so that she couldn't look at Grif with a wry, sarcastic expression as she asked, «Oh. Shall I bring the environmental systems back online while I'm at it, or is the plan for them to suffocate upon awakening?»
There was a long pause as Grif, who had already turned his back on the Bridge doors to begin his walk, stopped and looked back at the holopad. Serina now looked the soul of innocence, but he was sure she could feel the force of his squinting at her through his visor. «Yes, Serina. Please turn on the environment systems. Thank you.»
«Very well. Run along, now. You've got a lot of tubes to crack open.»
Grif sighed and started walking.
Serina was right: Even a select subset of the Spirit of Fire's crew was still quite a few cryotubes. She largely handled running the tubes through the wake cycle, but the rest of the process mainly fell to Grif. Between their being awake and his augmented strength, getting them out of the tubes wasn't hard. Neither, really, was getting them to hawk up and swallow the bronchial surfactant that they'd breathed in while being put to sleep. Well, the hawking-up was easy, anyway; half of them puked it out rather than swallowing it, and had to receive the nutrients it would've provided by way of an equally foul beverage. (Grif was satisfied that at least they all hated the process as much as he always used to, the few times he had to travel in cryo.)
(Also, even with the environment systems restored, Serina kept up a constant patter of orders over his helmet radio of things to do and keep an eye on, occasionally frosted over with a layer of sarcasm. It was annoying... and yet also somehow natural, in a way that Grif couldn't really place and didn't really want to consider too closely, given his experiences with the AI Omega, back in the Bad Old Days of the civil war.)
A few hours of this resulted in a group of a dozen defrosted people in one of the Spirit's briefing rooms. First and foremost was Captain James Cutter, the ship's commander. A grizzled, grim-faced man in his mid-to-late fifties, he had a thick moustache across his upper lip and his eyes tended to squint under the brim of his cap in a way that suggested he wouldn't look out of place in an old 20th century western movie. Behind him were Chief Engineer Andrew Prescott and two members of Cutter's Bridge crew, all busy checking their respective systems of the ship via remote-linked data pads.
Off to one side, the ship's nurse, Dr. Hershey, sat with a couple of members of her medical staff and a civilian Grif had only heard referred to as "Paul," chatting sotto voce about what could possibly be going on. On the other side, a tall, trim, dark-haired young woman with a somewhat elfin face -- another civilian, Professor Ellen Anders -- sat by herself. She was generally content to watch Grif with an unnerving look that seemed to say that she thought she could puzzle him out entirely just by observing him for long enough.
Whatever else any of them were doing, most of them still seemed a bit chilled, hunkering down with mugs of either coffee from the mess or hot cocoa from sickbay. (Why sickbay? Grif wasn't sure, but the Captain and Dr. Hershey were pretty insistent on it being the best.) Not so the three old-school original-generation SPARTAN-II super-soldiers in battered, bulky old MJOLNIR Mark IV armor. They stood in the back of the room, a vast hulking mass of olive-green menace watching the room protectively. Grif could tell that they, too, considered him something to be puzzled over, but with more of an eye to whether or not he was some sort of threat. He had, after all, been pretty cagey so far with telling anyone anything, and while he couldn't be anything but a SPARTAN and that gave him some points, he was definitely not what they expect of one of their own.«Hey, Serina?» Grif asked over his comm channel.
«Yes?»
«I was just noticing something. Everyone keeps acting as if they expect to see someone else in the room, and then getting thrown off when they realize he's not. Even the SPARTANs are doing it, which is totally fucking weird to see. What's with that, anyway?!»
«I imagine it has to do with Sergeant Forge. He usually led the Spirit's forces on the ground, and when the time came, he stayed behind to ensure our escape and the success of the mission.»
«...Oh. Ah, yeah, that'd explain it. Thanks.»
The natives were getting restless, but fortunately, everything that needed doing was done. A pedestal-mounted holopad switched on as Serina made her presence known, and Grif stepped up to the podium at the front of the room and took off his helmet. The latter action caught everyone's attention immediately, especially that of the other SPARTANs. While it would be unrealistic to say that SPARTANs never took off even so much as their helmet, it was certainly unusual for one to do so as casually as that.
Grif felt the many eyes upon him, including the ones that were themselves still hidden behind mirrored visors. He, in turn, looked out at them for a few long seconds, his jaw shifting around in his mouth as he pondered, almost as though chewing on the words he was about to say. Finally, a bit uncomfortably, he cleared his throat and began to speak.
"Okay. So, I considered a number of different approaches for this. Ultimately, I figured that since most of you are career military, and all of you are probably still geared up in a war-time mindset, it'd be best to just lay out the facts as they are. The full background would be... long, and parts of it are bizarre and almost certainly will be better told in a more relaxed atmosphere."
He looked for a moment like he was about to get into it, but rolled his eyes instead as he seemed to think of something. "Actually, before I do, to save time and trouble, I'm going to note right off that I'm a bit... unconventional, compared to what you're probably used to. In fact, I believe Serina got some sort of message, attached to my credentials, asking that you please humor me on the matter."
Serina nodded in confirmation, but that only intensified Cutter's already natural-seeming frown. In a deep, gritty voice, he asked, "Just how 'unconventional' are we talking about, here?" In the back of the room, the SPARTANs tensed, just enough for Grif's own enhanced senses to notice with more than a little alarm.
Uncharted Deep Space
Grif blinked into existence in a flash of PINpoint light... and floated. His arrival just a couple of inches above where he expected it to be, he found the corridor he was in to be just as airless and without gravity as if he'd PINned into space itself. Still, it was a corridor -- possibly even the right corridor -- and situations like this were what MJOLNIR was for. A quick alignment of his electromagnetic and gravity emitters gave him first a quick nudge down, then allowed the soles of his boots to attach to the deck plates, anchoring him solidly. His motion tracker and ARGUS sensors showed all-clear, but he kept his battle rifle at the ready anyway as he began walking.
«Halt.» As it happened, it was the right corridor, just a short distance from the Bridge. He stood at the doors to the Bridge now, in fact, but was stymied slightly by their being closed and sealed, with a glowing blue holographic woman barring his path. She had long dark hair and a severe demeanor, and her voice over the radio transmission had a crisp, precise diction whose accent he couldn't quite place. «Unknown presence detected. Identify yourself immediately or you will be considered a hostile intruder.»
One small part of Grif's brain wondered just what she could do about it offhand if he refused. The rest of him, however, ignored that, racked his rifle on his back and waved his arms a little. «Whoa, hey, no, easy, there. Scan my transponder. You should find an upload waiting for you with all the necessary creds and codes and stuff.»
The woman -- actually an AI, named Serina according to the information Grif had been given by his handlers -- looked at him skeptically, as though unsure if she should take offense at his tone, but did as he specified. It took her a few seconds for her to sort through the data that she'd downloaded from Grif's neural implant transponder, and as she did, she appeared to become increasingly concerned. «This... This doesn't seem physically possible.»
«Yeah, and if I had a credit for every time I heard that, I could probably buy my way out of the Army.» She didn't seem to know how to take that, but Grif waved off and said, «Skip it. Long story. Look, from what I've heard, the ship's still going pretty close to light speed, that apparently causes time dilation, and I've had way too fucking much of that, so could we possibly stop, and...» He looked around, suddenly unsure, and modified his next question. «This is just a power-saving measure for the crew in cryo, right? They're not all dead or anything?»
«No.» Serina shook her head, downcast. «We experienced some casualties in our last mission, but most of the crew survived and are still alive in stasis. Beginning deceleration procedures.»
Grif nodded. «Oh, good. I'm gonna head down to the Cryo bays, then. Figure it'll be best to start with the Captain, core staff, folks like that, explain things to them, and they can see about distributing that to the rest of the crew.»
«I'll meet you down there, then.» Now that she had things to do, Serina became more brisk and businesslike, although not so much so that she couldn't look at Grif with a wry, sarcastic expression as she asked, «Oh. Shall I bring the environmental systems back online while I'm at it, or is the plan for them to suffocate upon awakening?»
There was a long pause as Grif, who had already turned his back on the Bridge doors to begin his walk, stopped and looked back at the holopad. Serina now looked the soul of innocence, but he was sure she could feel the force of his squinting at her through his visor. «Yes, Serina. Please turn on the environment systems. Thank you.»
«Very well. Run along, now. You've got a lot of tubes to crack open.»
Grif sighed and started walking.
Serina was right: Even a select subset of the Spirit of Fire's crew was still quite a few cryotubes. She largely handled running the tubes through the wake cycle, but the rest of the process mainly fell to Grif. Between their being awake and his augmented strength, getting them out of the tubes wasn't hard. Neither, really, was getting them to hawk up and swallow the bronchial surfactant that they'd breathed in while being put to sleep. Well, the hawking-up was easy, anyway; half of them puked it out rather than swallowing it, and had to receive the nutrients it would've provided by way of an equally foul beverage. (Grif was satisfied that at least they all hated the process as much as he always used to, the few times he had to travel in cryo.)
(Also, even with the environment systems restored, Serina kept up a constant patter of orders over his helmet radio of things to do and keep an eye on, occasionally frosted over with a layer of sarcasm. It was annoying... and yet also somehow natural, in a way that Grif couldn't really place and didn't really want to consider too closely, given his experiences with the AI Omega, back in the Bad Old Days of the civil war.)
A few hours of this resulted in a group of a dozen defrosted people in one of the Spirit's briefing rooms. First and foremost was Captain James Cutter, the ship's commander. A grizzled, grim-faced man in his mid-to-late fifties, he had a thick moustache across his upper lip and his eyes tended to squint under the brim of his cap in a way that suggested he wouldn't look out of place in an old 20th century western movie. Behind him were Chief Engineer Andrew Prescott and two members of Cutter's Bridge crew, all busy checking their respective systems of the ship via remote-linked data pads.
Off to one side, the ship's nurse, Dr. Hershey, sat with a couple of members of her medical staff and a civilian Grif had only heard referred to as "Paul," chatting sotto voce about what could possibly be going on. On the other side, a tall, trim, dark-haired young woman with a somewhat elfin face -- another civilian, Professor Ellen Anders -- sat by herself. She was generally content to watch Grif with an unnerving look that seemed to say that she thought she could puzzle him out entirely just by observing him for long enough.
Whatever else any of them were doing, most of them still seemed a bit chilled, hunkering down with mugs of either coffee from the mess or hot cocoa from sickbay. (Why sickbay? Grif wasn't sure, but the Captain and Dr. Hershey were pretty insistent on it being the best.) Not so the three old-school original-generation SPARTAN-II super-soldiers in battered, bulky old MJOLNIR Mark IV armor. They stood in the back of the room, a vast hulking mass of olive-green menace watching the room protectively. Grif could tell that they, too, considered him something to be puzzled over, but with more of an eye to whether or not he was some sort of threat. He had, after all, been pretty cagey so far with telling anyone anything, and while he couldn't be anything but a SPARTAN and that gave him some points, he was definitely not what they expect of one of their own.«Hey, Serina?» Grif asked over his comm channel.
«Yes?»
«I was just noticing something. Everyone keeps acting as if they expect to see someone else in the room, and then getting thrown off when they realize he's not. Even the SPARTANs are doing it, which is totally fucking weird to see. What's with that, anyway?!»
«I imagine it has to do with Sergeant Forge. He usually led the Spirit's forces on the ground, and when the time came, he stayed behind to ensure our escape and the success of the mission.»
«...Oh. Ah, yeah, that'd explain it. Thanks.»
The natives were getting restless, but fortunately, everything that needed doing was done. A pedestal-mounted holopad switched on as Serina made her presence known, and Grif stepped up to the podium at the front of the room and took off his helmet. The latter action caught everyone's attention immediately, especially that of the other SPARTANs. While it would be unrealistic to say that SPARTANs never took off even so much as their helmet, it was certainly unusual for one to do so as casually as that.
Grif felt the many eyes upon him, including the ones that were themselves still hidden behind mirrored visors. He, in turn, looked out at them for a few long seconds, his jaw shifting around in his mouth as he pondered, almost as though chewing on the words he was about to say. Finally, a bit uncomfortably, he cleared his throat and began to speak.
"Okay. So, I considered a number of different approaches for this. Ultimately, I figured that since most of you are career military, and all of you are probably still geared up in a war-time mindset, it'd be best to just lay out the facts as they are. The full background would be... long, and parts of it are bizarre and almost certainly will be better told in a more relaxed atmosphere."
He looked for a moment like he was about to get into it, but rolled his eyes instead as he seemed to think of something. "Actually, before I do, to save time and trouble, I'm going to note right off that I'm a bit... unconventional, compared to what you're probably used to. In fact, I believe Serina got some sort of message, attached to my credentials, asking that you please humor me on the matter."
Serina nodded in confirmation, but that only intensified Cutter's already natural-seeming frown. In a deep, gritty voice, he asked, "Just how 'unconventional' are we talking about, here?" In the back of the room, the SPARTANs tensed, just enough for Grif's own enhanced senses to notice with more than a little alarm.