[h1][center][color=0072bc]Ben-E218[/color][/center][/h1] 			

[color=0072bc]"Oh, don't worry. I'd never attack a Sangheili in our group for those things. The UNSC's authority doesn't go that far, even though ONI seems to think that it should interfere with whatever it wants. For the record, I've always admired your people's ability to get things done. In any event, the information in question is that my standing orders supersede any particular directives I am otherwise assigned to on a mission. My superiors believed that you needed to be privy to this in order to explain my long periods of seeming absence. What I do is something my people- the human race- needs very badly yet cannot bring itself to admit. By necessity, what I do must be done off the record. The truth is a luxury my species can't afford. We're too weak to handle it, to paraphrase a centuries-old movie my people made." [/color]

Ben looked at Vael's armor, still unused. The armor was in a crate, but it was a container which Ben had seen before in Covenant barracks. 

[color=0072bc]"And on one minor note, you may want to put your armor on when you absolutely don't need to have it off. God knows there are plenty of people who have it out for your species after what happened during the war. Like at Harvest. Or Reach. Or even Earth, although I suppose we should thank your people for glassing that part of Africa, since the Flood had landed there and anything to stop them was warranted. Rest assured that you're being watched by ONI even now, but that doesn't mean they're looking out for your safety." [/color]

[color=fff79a] "For the record, Harvest was glassed by the Jiralhanae. Not that many people care to draw that distinction, although I suppose most people lump all of the Covenant in as equally culpable for those glassings, regardless of the facts." [/color] Phong kept his speech limited to Ben's systems, so Vael didn't hear that.