0435 HOURS, SEPTEMBER 25, 2554 (MILITARY CALENDAR)

SLIPSTREAM SPACE - TRAVELING ONTO UNKNOWN COORDINATES

Tysiac looked down again at the briefing data that ONI had given him before the long journey into the former Covenant territories of the galaxy. It had been the twelfth time he had done so since leaving the Sol System, yet out of boredom, he still obliged his idleness to find something to do.

2554 A.D; Almost more than a single year after the Great War ended. Before, it was just called the Human-Covenant War, but now folks across the board of the UNSC and UEG were calling it many things now. Not that there was anything 'great' about it, with as much pieces of what used to be planets needing to be picked up and terraformed to be inhabitable. A few memories of the planets he had fought across played briefly in his head, though they didn't stay for long as the man's thoughts drifted away. Those weren't the 'fun' memories of his time working under ONI, if one could ever really count them as such.

Turning away from the holopad and leaving the pilot seat of his given and slightly reconfigured Prowler, the Winter-class Last Word, Tysiac stretched his legs briefly before giving a small walk around the ship as it continued its trek through Slipspace. The navigation had said his destination was a week out, putting him over in a suspected area of activities that reached ONI. Oh indeed, the activities had been unusual at best. At first, they thought that one of the Halo Installations was acting up because of the actions of a specific Spartan-II and crew during Humanity's previous encounters with the first two Installations. Startup activations, standby protocols, engine warmups, the entire works with what had occurred during the later years of the War. Part of Tysiac hated he couldn't have joined on the Spartan's ventures across the Forerunner ringworlds. While he had the chance to venture and see the Rings for himself, he never had the joy of participating in those last acts of ending the War on the Ark.

No, instead he had the joy of being that subtle and behind-the-scene actor. Whether that was aiding small Covenant fleets to suddenly go dark, being later found torn to pieces either by their own weapons or by UNSC explosives. Causing certain data or tech to go missing, whether they had been UNSC, Insurrectionist or Covenant. Descending onto former colonies to cause Covenant forces to disappear alongside their Forerunner artifacts and reappearing into ONI hands. The sort of work that wasn't likely covered in black ink to resemble a barcode, but they weren't something ONI would willingly share with a nosey-somebody. Though that wasn't all he involved himself in, as small snippets of a certain project that ended up drawing more questions on its director and his intentions... Tysiac drew his thoughts away from Project Freelancer. As much as he never did like the Project and that went double with Charon Industries, it still hurt with the total loss. Though later on finding out the Director's reason for the entire project after his body and video recording of his late wife didn't exactly brighten his day by piecing together all the remnants of the Project.

Learning of the deaths of both agents York and Constance... neither of them were pleasant. In fact, if there was a time where Tysiac could blame his habit of brooding, it might've been after discovering the death of his childhood friend. There was nothing to say how Tysiac knew Allison Church enough to imagine her reaction to the entirety of Project Freelancer if she had survived their impromptu 'joint' mission on Skopje.

The ONI agent shook his head briefly, forcing his thoughts out to stop brooding and get himself away again from the more depressing parts of the past five years. Dwelling on their ghosts wasn't helping him. Neither now nor in the future.

So Tysiac returned to the briefing. Again. Instead of the superluminal communications between the Halo Array and the Ark in terms of activations and standbys, usually made from their assigned Monitors, instead they were brief, irregular pulses of energy and even shorter bursts of broken transmissions in sounds and images. As far as ONI knew, they were just random and scattered transmissions from glassed colonies and destroyed fleets. They were arriving towards Earth, however, no one was ever answering them, even during the Battle of Earth. Thus, until the end of the Human-Covenant War, ONI never bothered with them.

Now however, the irregularities and unusual garbles had been recently located almost on the opposite side of the galaxy of Sol, and almost in the center of former Covenant space. After a more focused investigation, they were lucky enough to reach Earth in the first place, as something had ripped a chunk of coherent quality of them during the travel. There were some speculations that Sierra-117's luck had to have been involved in these transmissions, because it probably was his level of luck just to get the coordinates for where all of this was coming from.

Thus, with Prowler's keys in hand, Tysiac given full briefing and control, off he went to potential dead space with no idea what was in store. One wouldn't have been wrong on thinking that this was ONI's way of tying loose ends and listing their agents as MIA.

Finishing up on the details for the thirteenth time and ensuring his body wasn't stiff any longer through a few stretches, Tysiac let memory run wild for a while, as there wasn't anything urgent and travel was still underway, with only a few minutes having passed since he left the chair. Plenty of time to think and brood... The first thing his mind began settling on was the last time he saw Constance before they went their separate ways.

She never liked that he accepted the offer to work with ONI...

Red vs Blue © Rooster Teeth. Halo © 343 Industries. Concept by Myshu, assisted by The Department of Chupapology.