Cath

The Cradle

“Very impressive. But, can it go three rounds in the ring with me?” 595 asked, raising her fists and bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if to brawl the supercarrier. She tested out six lightning fast jabs on the air that were quite hard to track with the naked eye, ducking left and right. Freyr giggled watching her and Vreta’s expression. 595 was wearing a black, skin tight combat suit today instead of her usual uniform. Her yellow hair was in a tight braid down the back of her head. Freyr thought she looked quite striking.

“That ship has quite an organic shape, is there a reason for that?” Masgard asked, pointing to the supercarrier. Freyr looked at it and even as someone who wasn’t generally interested in warships (apart from the AIs that helped run them), was intrigued by the massive ship’s unique silhouette.

The Barb sailed past the supercarrier, but they didn’t go too much further until a massive space structure loomed in the forward observation window. Freyr guessed it was some kind of orbital docking station, as several smaller craft were already clinging to it. They sidled up alongside the dock as Freyr carried on marvelling Rothia and it’s incredible black hole. Soon after, a voice sounded over the tannoy. “This is your captain. Docking is complete and a full stop has been achieved. Welcome to Rothia, everyone.” A few people cheered exuberantly as most of the crew began filing out of the observation deck. “Shall we go?” Freyr asked of everyone. “Don’t want to keep people waiting.”

Halo: Aegis Team

Tar 'Mdalak

---

Tar’s view was obscured by the large crate in front of her, so she didn’t see the Brute captain get hit. But when the relentless force against her from the Brute Shot abated, Tar dropped her cover, pulled her pistol from her mandibles and pointed it where her aggressor had been. She discovered the Brute was missing his head and some of his shoulders. He fell to his knees and then onto his side.

Tar growled; part of her had wanted the captain alive so she could question him about her father. The ships were being destroyed above them, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that important clues were being destroyed with them. Nevertheless, she appreciated the assist - wherever that had come from...

Tar pivoted and saw the last of the rebels running down a ramp into the belly of the Forerunner structure. She fired her pistol at them until the bullets ran out and then moved to kneel by another dead rebel. Keeping her eyes up to scan the battlefield, Tar pulled two magazines from the female’s tactical vest. She deftly reloaded with one of them, checking the new rounds were chambered correctly before standing. She held the second mag against the pistol grip, comfortably secured by her long Sangheili fingers.

Before her eyes, a fast moving object slammed into the ground ahead of her, throwing up a cloud of dust. Tar cautiously moved forward with her pistol out and slightly tilted in front of her. Gradually, the dust settled and Tar saw another Spartan in grey and silver armour on the floor. She knelt beside the downed Spartan and lifted their forearm off the floor as a few more presumed members of Aegis team gathered around. “Can you hear me? Are you operational?” Tar shouted over the sound of gunfire, peering into the soldier’s individual eye holes and gently shaking their arm.

The Cradle

The Welcome Wagon

The rest of Barbarossa's two week journey to Rothia passed in a flurry of activity for Freyr. The discovery of Cradle-like interference in Rothian genetics had to be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt. The team cross referenced seven different Cradle creature samples with the complete library of Rothian DNA history Vreta provided. On day four, Freyr could say with some certainty that a complex message was hidden in Vreta’s junk DNA. Part of that message was incomprehensible, but they were able to extract the same coordinates the comms array had pinged back on Outremer.

After a couple of mandated delays, they tested a sample of Human DNA in the same way on day three. 595 showed up with a delegate from the Security Council and classified it Top Secret, meaning the experiment was conducted behind closed doors.

Apart from work, which took up about seventy percent of her waking hours, Freyr spent time in the combat simulator with 595 and (sometimes) Masgard. They practiced on targets and gradually became more familiar with a variety of weapons. Freyr found out that Masgard was something of an Outremer aristocrat; he could trace his lineage back to the small first wave of colonists that landed on the planet. He had been a partner at one of Babylon’s top law firms before being poached to work for the Director-General.

Freyr couldn’t coax any details out of Agent 595, not even her real name. The captain had referred to her as ‘from Cradle Security’, but Freyr sincerely doubted that was the case. CraSec, up until a few months ago, had been a bunch of glorified night watchmen. Behind 595’s friendly, occasionally excitable persona was a vicious solo operator who seemed at ease in extremely dangerous situations. On day seven, she clinically dismantled multiple combat droids in hand to hand combat with Freyr and Masgard watching in disbelief. The same day, 595 insisted on clearing a kill house meant for four people on her own.

To unwind from all this, Freyr spent a bit more time in the beach room. However she couldn’t stay in there alone, often electing to invite Vreta. That was on her own, she always ended up thinking about how she never got the chance to take David and Amy to a beach. In fact, every one of Freyr’s waking moments not occupied by frenzied activity somehow wound back to thinking about her family. She did not sleep easily, and her dreams were plagued by Cradle monsters.

She was excited to see Rothia, having read up on what to expect beforehand. But when Vreta invited her to the observation deck on arrival day, it surpassed all expectations. “Oh, wow!” She exclaimed, covering her open mouth with both hands at the sight of the famed black hole. “Look at that..” Masgard murmured beside her. “Very picturesque, Vreta’Sori! I can see why you wanted us to come all this way now.” 595 grinned, patting the top of Vreta’s tail where a Human’s behind would’ve been. Freyr’s team were like kids in an aquarium, pressing their noses to the glass to get as close as possible. “Such a pretty planet, too!” Freyr cooed, taking in all the colours of the rings. She took pictures via her implant and resolved to show them to David and Amy when she saw them next.

The Cradle

Freyr looked at Vreta and immediately realised she’d been insensitive. This discovery, if correct, could change everything he thought he knew about himself. She was still learning Rothian expressions, but her new friend seemed “Yes of course, we’ll make sure we’re one hundred percent certain before going any further.” She reached out and put her hand on Vreta’s as it lay forlornly across the console, giving it a squeeze. “Everything is going to be OK, i promise.”

Vreta’s last question caught Freyr off guard - she withdrew her hand and scratched her head. “I suppose, no...we haven’t. We’ve only been able to analyse organic tissue samples from Cradle creatures for a few months. I don’t think we’ve looked at our own DNA…” Freyr looked around at her team, and a few of them shook their heads. “But I can see your logic...Dr Hou, get me a swab kit!” The lab was now in a frenzy, and Freyr quickly blocked out all non-participants.

“I think we should leave them to it. We’ll only get in the way of this well-oiled machine.” 595 said, appearing at Vreta’s side again. She wanted to get the Rothian away from the lab in case another earth-shattering discovery was made; information was flowing a little bit too freely right now. Then, she could buy some time to report back to her superiors and get her orders.

The Cradle

“Yes, the Cradle has its own language that is baffling in scale and complexity. We don’t understand all of it yet, but we should be able to at least pick up this ‘signature’ if it appears.” Freyr explained as a shape moving into the lab caught her eye. Looking up, she saw Agent 595 approaching, a curious look on her face. “What’s going on in here?” She asked, wearing a polite smile. Freyr began to explain, but a noise from the console interrupted her halfway through.

“Oh my…” she murmured, utterly engrossed in the data displaying in her overlay glasses. Dr Hou began shouting excitedly in Cantonese and grabbed one of his colleagues to double check. “Vreta... i think we have a match!” Freyr looked up at the alien, eyes shining behind her glasses. On the hologram, numerous small patterns were simultaneously detected and pulled out of the double Helix. “Your DNA presents multiple similarities with a Cradle design!”

Pretty much everyone in the lab had stopped to watch this experiment unfold by this point. When the results came in, they all began excitedly whooping, yelling, chatting and crowding around Freyr to congratulate her. She grinned broadly, still unable to believe what she was seeing. She returned a few high fives before dishing out further orders; namely to decode the exact coordinates from the data. Her team swirled around her like a shoal of fish as they got to work.

595 came around to Vreta’s side and watched his expression with an inscrutable stare. “Welcome to the family. What’re you going to do now?”

The Cradle

“Perhaps. Direct communication between the Cradle and anything outside Babylon’s biosphere is basically impossible. In theory, you could transmit information indirectly through all of the connections the Cradle has with our infrastructure on Outremer.” Freyr mused as they rounded a large bank of workspace to the console. She shooed Dr Hou away from the interface's main seat in Cantonese and began manipulating a holo of a double helix, regressing Vreta’s DNA back to its original form.

“However, these connections are basically all one way: outward from the Cradle. Which means any inward traffic would raise flags that are closely monitored. The most public devices I can think of that freely send information into the Cradle are the entry harnesses and implants. But even then, they serve the quite simple purpose of associating that person with a Cradle ID. No wiggle room for other information that i can think of...”

With the DNA strand returned to a pre-augmented state, Freyr and several of her team stripped it back even further. They pulled at the thread that was evolution, following a trail of mutations back through the entire history of the Rothian species. “So with conventional signals unlikely, where does that leave us? We know the Cradle has the ability to manipulate DNA, from the creatures that attacked us. What if, whatever may be on Rothia...did something similar to you, in the hope that you’ll find your way to the Cradle? With a similar ‘signature’ style, the Cradle would be able to recognise anything related to it straight away. Moreover, the Rothia entity could encode all sorts of information into your genes, including patterns that can be converted into coordinates.”

With Vreta's DNA now devolved to a very early point in Rothian development, Freyr motioned for her team to stop. Putting on a pair of overlay glasses to add some of the annotations back into her view of the holo, Freyr brought in a DNA sample found in all of the Cradle creature samples. Dr Hou and several more of the team activated a machine learning algorithm to detect similarities and patterns. Parts of each structure began quickly highlighting as the program cross-referenced them.

The Cradle

“Not stressed, just...thinking. Lets go to the lab; i need to try something.” Freyr confirmed, wading out of the shallows to her clothes. She quickly unrolled her trouser legs, put her shoes and socks on and folded her jumper over her arm. “Can you send your records on to the lab?” The team might need a little bit of time to work through them.

---

Freyr power walked back through the ship, her mind buzzing with possibilities. She called ahead to briefly outline her theory and what she needed to test it. So when they walked back into the open plan lab area, she didn’t even need to say anything. Dr Hou just ran over and handed her a swab set.

Freyr deftly primed the swab while turning to Vreta. “Open your mouth, please.” She commanded. Her stomach tightened when she got a full, uninterrupted view of all the sharp teeth in Vreta’s long snout. Waiting a moment to ensure it was locked in place, Freyr carefully rubbed the swab long the roof of his mouth.

Satisfied she had a good sample, Freyr gratefully retrieved her hand. “Thank you, Vreta. Sequence this for me, please.” She handed the swab in a test tube back to Dr Hou, who took it and ran back around the lab to a console several more colleagues were clustered by.

“The question I want to answer is this - how did the Cradle know to ping that very specific location on Rothia?” Freyr began, gently leading Vreta toward the console. “Did it remember something from the distant past, or did it obtain new information? Either answer has big implications for our understanding of the Cradle's history and capabilities.”

The Cradle

“Hmm...very interesting.” Freyr scooped up some water in her hands and watched it leak back into the pool. “Is it just the lack of extinction events that spurred this accelerated evolution, or were any other factors at play?” In her mind’s eye, Freyr was quickly spooling through available Rothian paleontological and biological evolution records. “That thing in the Cradle - it said it’d watched your species develop, right? Like it had a vested interest…” She looked at Vreta, who sat watching her. “Sorry, this may seem strange, but can i take a sample of your DNA? I want to test out a theory.”

The Cradle

“I think so.” Freyr nodded. “I can vouch personally for my team; some of them are slightly...eccentric but overall they’re very well behaved. We all spend a lot of our working time in the Cradle, where surveillance is also extensive and the environment itself is analysing your DNA every second of the day. As for the soldiers, i’m sure they’ll have enough discipline to respect your planet’s rules while on the ground.”

Freyr made a cutting motion on the top of the water, sending a small jet of water out into the empty pool to her side. “From what i know of our target site, it’s not particularly close to any population centres. So hopefully the impact on Rothian civilians will be minimal. Well, as long as whatever we find decides to play nice…” She trailed off, deep in thought. The itch at the back of her head to get back to the lab was growing more persistent. She moved slightly further into the pool; water lapped around the hems of her trousers. “What do you know of the evolution of your species? Specifically early period?” She asked suddenly.

The Cradle

“Shorts? Oh, they’re...well, they’re what the man with red hair is wearing over there.” Freyr pointed to a barrel chested sailor with incredibly muscly legs bound by tight navy shorts. He was part of a group of bare chested men playing volleyball on the sand. Freyr ripped her eyes away from the scene to look back at Vreta. “A waiver sounds like something Masgard or the Captain will want to know about. I’m sure if your meds are ready for import onto the ship straight away, that will be preferable.”

Freyr really wished she’d brought some shorts with her to the beach room. Vreta looked quite comfortable half submerged in the water, if a little bit predator-esque to her evolutionary watering hole instincts. She contented herself by moving each of her legs back and forward to get the sensation of rushing water on her skin. “Yes of course, how stupid of me. Obviously the captain would’ve thought of that for her soldiers. I’ll just need to ask her to provide suits for my team as well.”

Freyr was surprised to learn about the level of surveillance on Rothia. While she personally didn’t mind too much - she worked in an environment that ostensibly was scanning her entire being a trillion times a second, she knew some people took their privacy very seriously. “I see. Do you not feel uneasy about being watched all the time? How long has that been going on? Studies have shown that humans who know they’re always under surveillance are more prone to stress-related illnesses. Have you found that to be the case with Rothians too, or not?”