She shivered a bit in the cool of her ship. The suit was bulky and she only wore it when necessary. Now was not the time. Goose pimples formed on her forearm, making the fine, blonde hairs on her arm stand on end. She rubbed her arm to fend off the chill.

"Adam," she said, though she was the only person in the confines of the small, yellow ship drifting through random celestial particles.

A disembodied voice answered happily, "Yes, Lady?"

"Please increase ship's temperature by two degrees," she said.

The console flickered. "Yes, Lady. Ambient ship's temperature now 26 degrees Celsius."

Sighing, happy the temperature was warming the ship, she said, "Thank you Adam," then sipped her tea.

Samus Aran, the pilot of the vessel, was enjoying a moment of solitude, usually interrupted by excursions to alien worlds, fending off Phazon beasts and devilish Metroids. Standing at six feet even, Samus was a tall, stout woman, but still enjoyed the softer things in life when not running from the space pirates threatening the galaxy. "Adam, play Bach."

"Yes, Lady," the console responded, and then started playing Cello Suite No. 1.

Samus sighed, turned of the heads up display on the dash and said, "I'm going to take a bath."

The system acknowledged her as she got up from the pilot's seat of her ship and walked to the back room.

She stood over the tub and twisted a red knob, then a blue knob. The tub began to fill. Pulling the broach from her hair, she ran her fingers through her hair, then pulled off the red tank top she'd been wearing. After removing her shorts, she dipped her toe into the now-filled tub and lowered herself into the warm water. Reveling in her moment of relaxation, she sighed hard and reached out, thinking of pouring herself a glass of wine, but the food storage unit was out of reach. She sighed and closed her eyes.

The music had gone through the prelude and into the second movement, Allemande when the ship jolted suddenly, sloshing some of the water from the tub onto the hard, metal floor. The ship's internal alarm began blaring, startling Samus from her daze. She jumped from the tub, grabbed a towel and ran into the ship's control room.

"Adam, what is it?" she asked the computer.

A series of lights on the console flickered and a readout displayed on the ship's access panel. Finally answered, Adam replied, "Space pirates, coordinates 141 mark 243."

"Evasive maneuvers!" Samus cried, jumping into the pilot's seat.

The ship's thrusters threw the ship to the left, responding to the fire from the approaching enemy ship.

Pounding the console, Samus cried, "Return fire, Adam!"

The ship jerked, recoiling from the plasma cannon blast directly under the cockpit.

"Hit, Lady!" Adam cried.

The pirate ship fired on Samus' ship, striking the left engine core. The explosion sent the ship careening away from the approaching pirate ship, directly into a piece of interstellar junk covered in a strange blue material.

The firing stopped.

Samus pulled the towel back around herself—which had fallen off during the course of the battle—and said, "Status report."

Adam flickered and whirred, showing a display of the ship's hull and said, "Pirate ship fleeing on course 223 mark 435, unable to pursue. Right engine heavily damaged and leaking drive plasma."

Samus read the readout on the display and said, "How far are we from the nearest Galactic Federation outpost?"

Adam showed a map on the screen and said, "Five point two light years. Shall I send a distress beacon, Lady?"

Before Samus could reply, the internal sensors flickered again. "Is it the space pirates?"

"No, Lady," Adam said. "The unknown matter on the debris is infiltrating the hull through the tear in the engine coil and reacting…" Adam's voice faded and the lights went out. Immediately, the reserve system kicked in and Adam continued, "… with the drive plasma from the engine."

Samus pressed a button on the console, opening a drawer full of clothing. "I guess I'll have to check it out," she said, grabbing a new top and shorts from it.

She opened the door to the cabinet holding her Varia suit and began integrating herself with it.

Fully dressed, she turned on the suit's self-sustaining life support system and walked to the air lock to see the problem with the ship. She pressed the button, sealing the chamber and opening the hatch. Free floating in space, Samus maneuvered herself to the dorsal area of the ship to inspect the damage, still wary of the previous space pirate threat.

With her suit's internal sensors, she ran her hand over the hole in the ship trying to determine the composition of the new metal compound forming, rendering a readout on her visor's HUD.

In the helmet, Adam's voice said, "PLUTONIUM 15.08 percent, TANTALUM 18.0 percent, XENON 27.71 percent, PROMETHIUM 24.02 percent, DIALUM 10.62 percent, MERCURY 4.0 percent..." the readout stopped. "UNKNOWN 0.57 percent."

"Hmm," Samus said. "Unknown…"

The display in her visor faded away, once again showing the hole in the ship and the open chasm of space around her. Suddenly, the compound began to react, creating a small, blue hole around the ship.

The sensors in Samus' helmet began blinking and Adam said, "Lady, please return to the ship. A subspace fracture is forming."

Alarmed, Samus clambered up the side of the ship and back through the hatch. She threw herself back through it and pressed the button resealing the air lock and reinstating the artificial gravity. "Adam, get us out of here!" she cried, stumbling back through the air lock and into the cockpit.

A jolt rocked the ship and the window into space was consumed in the blue hole, shaking the ship into it.

Samus screamed, tumbling through the ship, shearing itself apart from the tear in space.

Then suddenly, it stopped. The internal sensors in her visor showed the atmosphere was stable in her ship. She pulled off her helmet and said, "Adam, status!"

Static. "Skreet… schhh… 25 percent to dor screech… blip… approaching large circular structure. Screech… habitable atmosphere."

"Adam's down," Samus mumbled to herself. She approached the console and pressed a small button, causing a small control stick to emerge from the dash. "Firing maneuvering thrusters," Samus said, moving the ship slowly down to the surface of the ring.

---

"Chief."

The chamber holding the large, green-suited man whirred to life. "Cortana," he said.

"John, the ship's battery is almost dead. I've been rerouting all the major systems to turn off as much as possible to keep the stasis chamber intact and my own system. A subspace rupture triggered an energy leak. And…" Cortana stopped.

"Yes?" Master Chief replied, jumping from the pod, then testing his orientation in the chasm of space.

"There's bad news and worse news. Which do you want to hear first?" the female computer construct said, looking disparaged.

"The worse news. But first, any word from ONI or UNSC?" Chief asked, taking Cortana's program from the console and inserting it into his helmet.

Cortana sighed and said, "None, and we're approaching another Halo. Coordinates show this is Halo Beta. We're approximately 15,000 light years away from the remains of the Ark."

Chief walked over to a weapons locker, retrieved a battle rifle and said, "Then we've gone through a slipstream to the other side of the galaxy. How long have I been out?"

"Five and a half years," Cortana replied, internally configuring the Chief's armor and temperature systems.

"Then that means…" the Chief started, stretching his arm, limbering the gel coating inside his suit.

"The worse news," she diffused.

Chief sighed, his arms showing his depression. "Your program's lifespan is almost over."

Cortana didn't reply.

Resolute, Master Chief walked to the edge of the hangar bay open to space and looked at the Halo in his visor. He grabbed a thrust pack from the side of the bay and said, "We're leaving."

He stepped into space, using the thruster to approach Beta Halo. "What do we know," the Chief asked?

"Not much," Cortana replied. "A small, yellow craft of unknown origin landed in sector 8 about 15 minutes ago. My calculations show the ship is the source of the anomaly that drained the Forward Unto Dawn's power supply."

Firing the thruster again, accelerating into the Halo's gravity, Chief said, "Covenant remnant?"

"I can't be sure," Cortana replied. "At our current trajectory, we'll land in sector 7, five klicks from the ship's landing site."

Still gaining speed and draining the MJOLNIR Mark VI armor's heat shield, Master Chief landed with a hard thump in a snowy region, melting the snow around him into a big puddle of water.

Dripping wet with steam pouring off him, Master Chief got to his feet, inspecting his armor for damage, then grabbed his weapon. "Saddle up..." he started. "...lock and load."

Cortana laughed and said, "Let's go Clint Eastwood."

"Who?" the Chief asked, curious as to her reference.

"Nevermind," Cortana sighed. "If we get back to Earth…"

The Chief interrupted her, saying, "When…"

Cortana sighed again and said, "When we get back to Earth, you're going to read a history book."