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Shadows of Archon (part 4) - Mirror Mirror
Posted By: Wado<wyamauchi@msn.com>
Date: 12 August 2002, 8:12 am
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This is a CBN special report from inside the forbidden zone: Commander Thom has been spotted on a secret mission. What could this mission be? Insider reports that he made a stop at an old hangout in sector 13. Local sources say he headed out on a vector towards the Reach system.
Stay tuned to CBN, the Covenant Broadcasting Network, for all the inside scoop.
--------------
In an enormous underground chamber on planet Reach, Commander Thom, the mighty Covenant hero, speaks to his captives -- a human Spartan named John and his AI companion Cortana. For captives, they seem unusually friendly to Thom. Then again, nothing really seems usual around here. The planet is in ruin, the area is probably infested by the strange aliens called the flood, and in the middle of this chamber is a giant portal filled with spinning strands of energy. Not to mention a Terran Long Sword fighter reading as a ship from the forerunners, a race long gone from tens of thousands of years ago.
Thom says, "Spartan John, let me get this straight, you are the same Spartan that caused the destruction of the sacred Halo and most of an entire Covenant armada, not to mention hundreds of other Covenant soldiers. Now you want me to just let you go in exchange for nothing but a story? A story I might add that I have no way of confirming if it is true or false. Tell me again that you didn't get hit in the head once too many times."
John the Spartan replies, "Yes Commander Thom, when I am done with the story, you will let me go."
Thom, a slender Covenant Elite, sizes up the smaller human Spartan. "I never did take a liking to interrogation. Torture, drugs, mind probes just aren't my thing. I still don't see why I'm going to let a Spartan go, but tell me your story anyway."
John tells his story...
-----
Did you ever just want to sleep in but you couldn't because you had to be somewhere else? Or maybe you had to study for an exam so you couldn't go on that hot date. We're always faced with choices like this. Wouldn't it be great if there was more than one of us? One of you could study for the exam while the other went on that hot date.
Well the Old Ones figured out how to do this. The Old Ones were not forerunners -- The Old Ones came before.
The way they did it was to create temporary shadow-selves of an original. Pretty much an excellent idea if you could get around all the improbabilities and contradictions. At first it worked nicely, these "shadow-selves" would stick around for short periods of time and when they faded, the "true-self" would gain the experience and memories from the shadow. However, like in everything, there are those that wanted to make it better, stronger -- push it to the limits... Soon the time span for shadow-selves was increased from hours to days and then weeks. As shadow-selves lived longer, they began to take on a life of their own. They started to believe they were the true-self. In fact if they killed the true-self and absorbed the energy that was released, they could significantly increase their life spans. The paradox was too much for many shadow-selves and they went insane.
This was the end of the Old Ones. They had conquered space and in many regards time too, the Old Ones who could not be defeated by any outsiders, collapsed from the inside. You could say that they were defeated by themselves -- well by their shadow-selves at least.
That's pretty much the end of the story, just one more thing...
That mysterious portal in the middle of this chamber is a device from the Old Ones. It can be used to travel to any other portal or to create shadow-selves. It works kind of like this, ummmm.
-----
As John meditates, forms appear around the chamber, first one, then two, then a few dozen. From the portal more forms appear, marching like wind up toy soldiers they move out in formation. The forms become clear, they are Spartans, armed Spartans, and they all look exactly like John.
The Covenant forces are over whelmed. They drop their weapons and raise their hands in surrender.
John's shadow-selves release him. The tables are turned. All the Covenant are herded together but instead of being restrained they are handed back their weapons.
John says, "The Old Ones also figured out something about time travel. Commander Thom I think you know what you must do now if you really want to continue being here."
The roof of the chamber opens. Commander Thom gives the order to have their scout ship flown into the chamber. After it arrives the ship and all the crew are exposed to the energies of the portal. Shadow-selves of themselves and their ship appear and disappear into a portal through time.
With that done, the time has passed for John's shadow-selves and they fade. The tables are turned once again.
Commander Thom says, "Spartan, once again you could be our prisoner. Only this time, let's call a truce. This is all too confusing for my brain. Talk to Science Office Noc please."
John replies, "On one condition, let's forgo the formality, just call me John."
Thom, "Very well it's a deal John, and you can just call be Thom."
John directs Noc to Cortana. Cortana proceeds to tell Noc the details of what happened. She explains, "The Master Chief (John the Spartan) and I arrived here three days ago. We were looking for Terran survivors when we picked up on the strange energy emitted by the portal. We came down to investigate only to discover what we thought was a battle taking place between Terrans and Covenants, but as it turned out it was more of a free for all with mobs hunting down stragglers. Those that died disappeared into a cloud of energy and got sucked up by some of the others. We later found out that this was a war between shadow-selves started three years ago by Terran and Covenant scientists who desired to keep the portal for themselves. These scientists are long dead but left this battle going in some kind of infinite loop. The war had made the entire sector unstable, particularly jump space which it turns out is very susceptible to the energies of the portal. Whole ships disappeared as they traveled through this sector in jump space. The Covenant call this area the quarantined zone, but not because of the flood infestation like everyone thinks, but rather because of the ships disappearing in jump space. We found some records from the scientists, they said that at one point an entire battle group of Covenant ships was sucked up into nowhere space when they tried to make a jump. We found the portal and then some of the shadow-selves came out of hiding and begged for us to stop the insanity. Apparently shadow-selves cannot operate the portal, a sort of safety feature programmed by the Old Ones. We did not know what to do but then he came -- A shadow-self of the Master Chief from the future. He told us what to do to stop the shadow-self war but he also gave us one additional instruction. We must send a shadow-self of a Covenant scout ship back in time. We had no idea what he was talking about until you arrived, then everything began to make sense; and you arrived in the just nick of time because the Master Chief's shadow-self from the future started to go mad -- tried to kill the Master Chief."
Noc looks at Cortana, her holographic image reflecting in his eyes. He says, "Fascinating."
The day goes on, Cortana and Noc continue to exchange information. The rest of the Covenant except those on patrol duty relax, take advantage of the opportunity to talk and eat.
John explains to Thom how his Long Sword fighter was modified with technology from the Old Ones and the forerunners. Well not mainstream forerunner, it is Archonian technology. It's from the time of the forerunners but the Archons were kind of the black sheep of the forerunners.
Meanwhile, Sub-commander Zax and his squad of Covenant grunts patrol the area outside. Zax has purposely taken the lead on all the patrols of the day to avoid spending any time in the presence of John, the Spartan.
Grunt squad leader to Zax, "Sir I recommend that you let us handle the next wide sweep of the area, you've been out here all day. It has been very quiet -- not a trace of any flood in these parts. I doubt with all the constant fighting that has been going on here for the last few years that there's even a flood within 100 kilometers of here."
Zax replies, "Just one more patrol Squad Leader, it's all I've got left right now. To think that three years ago I fought a battle that could not have been won on this very soil. We didn't know it at the time, we should have just retreated but we were too honorable, well too stubborn to do so. Thousands of Terrans, and they kept coming."
Squad leader, "Sir, I heard them back at base camp, they said that the Terrans were shadow-selves created by the portal."
Zax, "I know that now. We didn't know that then. We actually thought we could defeat the Terrans, especially when it seemed we were being reinforced. Like some godsend, our own fallen troops seemed to return to battle. But then the nightmare started. On the second day of fighting, we saw Elites that looked like some of the guys that were still alive. Then on the third day, some of these strange Elites started to attack us as well as the Terrans. We really started to lose it. We started to have memories of being killed in battle, over and over again in hundreds of different ways. On the fourth day only 24 of the original 7th Legion were still together when the evac ships came and pulled us off this rock. They wouldn't use jump drives until out of the system so for another 15 days we continued to have these weird memories popping in our heads. Only 13 of us made it out of the system, my best buddy blew his head off on the 8th day with a fuel rod cannon. Squad Leader, do you still want to make the next wide sweep without me?"
Squad Leader hesitates then says, "Sir, if you don't mind, we could use your company on this next wide sweep."
-- Next, Forgotten Realms --
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