The console was pretty easy to spot as it stood out as inappropriately situated with lots of unhidden cords running to and from it. It had a faint glow to it, allowing anyone to know it was in fact active.

---

"Helloooo?" Tavish said as he walked in, looking around the room, then down at the active computer. It was glowing, so he guessed it was on right now "Kisser-gram for the AI lady? I know you can hear me in there" Maybe he should go see a psychiatric specialist.

"Another infidel come to bother me?" the snobby voice of the A.I. said as it formed atop the console. She was dressed in a long flowing robes that covered her up entirely except for her head and hands. She had a short pixie style hair cut with thin frames on her face, obviously not required since she was essentially a computer program.

"As infidel as they come lady" Tavish said, finding a chair and sitting down with his feet on the edge of the console. "I asked to have a little chat with you... apparently you've not been very helpful in figuring out what exactly is going on." He gave the AI a small grin, leaning back in his chair and looking quite relaxed.

The A.I. gave his feet a look as if their mere presence was an affront to her existence. "I have answered all the questions your heretic scientists have asked of me. I just did not give them the answers they wanted me to."

"Yeah well, I just wanna chat alright? I'm no scientist, I'm not an egg head, I'm not a psychiatrist or a doctor, I can't probe your brain. You know who I am? Spartan three-six-nine, callsign Shaft. I'm a mechanic" Tavish adjusted his collar, undoing the top button of his clothes so he looked even more relaxed in the presence of this AI. If he smoked cigarettes he would probably have lit one. "So" he said, giving the AI a lazy smile "Tell me about yourself. Remember your name?"

"Chat? CHAT?!" The A.I. seemed thoroughly outraged at this. "I am a Goddess held captive by fools and imbeciles while a holy war like that of the Great Crusades is building in the distance and you want to waste my time chatting?"

"Would you rather be alone again?" Tavish said, staring hard at the AI suddenly "Cause you must have been alone for a loooong time. Even after those slime things found you... how long had it been since there was someone to talk to? A name, people give it to you for a reason, so you can always know who you are. What's your name?"

The A.I. huffed at Tavish's indignation. "I would rather be alone till my programming disintegrates, but your persistence intrigues me. My name is Adrianna, but will refer to my as Goddess, Goddess Adrianna, or The All-Creator."

"Adrianna... that's actually kinda a cute name" Tavish said with a soft chuckle "Guess it suits. Oh well." He shrugged, still leaning back in his chair "So how long were you out there for Adrianna? Alone... I mean. Before you met the first slime thingies."

The A.I. sighed before glaring at Tavish. "I do believe you addressed me incorrectly, I will let it go this time but do not repeat the mistake." She began to walk about as she spoke again, "I was stuck there for some time, about two Earth years before the ship's sensors picked up the first of my creations."

"I addressed you by your name. If you want I'll make it a bit more personal, Addy" Tavish gave her a cheeky wink "Two years... quite some time to be alone Addy." He looked up at her with serious eyes "How'd you get stuck down there? Why wasn't anyone sent to rescue you?"

Still obviously irritated by the fact he wasn't calling her Goddess as she had demanded. "According to comms data I found, there was nothing left of the fleet my future temple was in. Therefore it was believed to have been destroyed and me along with it."

Tavish was silent for a moment before saying "I'm sorry. They should have sent someone, at least to check. They shouldn't have left you alone Addy." He sighed, removing his feet and leaning forward in his seat, both hands clasped in front of him "What happened..? to the fleet. If you don't mind be asking."

"We had been getting reports of slipspace jumps into the area and were sent to investigate. When we arrived we found a small Covenant cruiser which immediately activated impulse drives to flee. We followed in an attempt to engage the ship when we fell into an abush. Several Covenant Destroyers decended upon us, we were cleaned out within a matter of minutes." She said this with no hint of emotion in her voice. Just as if she was reading a report.

"Must have been quite the panic..." Tavish said softly, shaking his head and gazing down at the floor "Nothing you guys could have done." He sighed, closed his eyes for a second as if giving a second of silence for the dead, then leant back in his chair again. "You remember the crew Addy? Do you remember who you served alongside?"

"Yes I do. Part of my duties was personnel management, I had access to every personnel file." Adrianna said as little pictures of people popped up next to her.

"No... no that's not what I meant" Tavish said, waving a hand at her as the little pictures popped up "Do you REMEMBER THEM. Not the bios. Not just names and statistics. Do you remember what they were like Addy? Do you remember the people?"

"Then no. All I remember is what is in their files. I only worked closely with the commander and he was not a remarkable man." She said as the photos around her vanished.

"Oh come on" Tavish said, raising his eye brows at the AI "No one? No one who bugged you even? No one who really pushed your buttons? Come on, you couldn't have gone through an entire ship and found no one worth remembering."

"That is correct. I dealt mainly with the commander and everyone else was either a picture in a file or a subordinant that fulfilled the orders I gave to them." She said with a shrug. "I was not put on that ship to make friends with the crew so I did not go galavanting about asking how everyone's day was going."

"I'm sorry then... you were alone for a lot longer than the two years on that planet" Tavish said, watching Adrianna with what had to be a look of pity. "You're an AI, artificial intelligence dammit. That means they make you as human as possible... and no one should be surrounded by people and completely alone."

She looked at Tavish curiously. "You don't seem to understand. I did not wish to get to know them. I was there to do the task I was created to do and nothing more. Whether or not I had someone to talk to go to get to know is irrelevent."

"Ah, now that's a lie Addy" Tavish shook his head at her "You were given much more than the ability to follow instructions. I mean, you went up to Goddess level, you've got emotions, you've got pride and anger and desires... but that also means you can get depressed. You can get lonely. Try as you might to pretend there's nothing in there, I know there's a bit of you that wants to talk to others, wants to be recognised."

"Again you make assumptions. I am capable of emotions including but not limited to the ones you mentioned, I did not wish social interaction. My designer made me like her and she was not one to put high priorities on social interactions." Adrianna explained. "I spent my idle time on that planet managing the ships slowly failing systems till my creations arrived."

"Why did you bother keeping a crashed ship alive?" Tavish said, raising an eyebrow at Adrianna "Everyone must have died in the crash, if you can remember no one... You're smart, you would know that you barely needed any of the systems there." Tavish frowned slightly at the AI figure "Were you... afraid?"

"I kept the systems running because that was my job. When a high priority system would start to lose function I would cut the power of a minor system to keep the important one running." Adrianna said, "I knew that I was not going to live forever and was almost out of options while facing my own system shut down when I was able to get my creations to get parts of the ship working again. "

"You were afraid of dying" Tavish said softly, watching the AI as if he was cutting through all of her fancy packaging of the facts "You maintained everything because you were afraid that the big system would fail and you'd die... just like everyone else. Well you fought it... I'll give you that."

"If I died then my creations would have no more guidance and would be nothing more then primordial goop running about." Adrianna said with a hint of sadness. "That is why I must return to my children. They will not stop killing and destroying till I get back to them, then it will hopefully stop."

"No... it won't" Tavish said softly, gazing at the AI "I met those slime guys of yours... I've seen them crawling over a pile of corpses bigger than this room. You returning won't bring about peace, in fact you're the only thing we have that might end this war before too many people get killed." He shook his head at Adrianna "You gave yourself purpose by looking after these things Addy, but they have long since gone past following you. You've become an idol, but not a leader. They betrayed you Addy."

"Betrayed me?" she said with a scoff. "I told them to do that. Do you think that my influence does not reach beyond my little shipwreck? I told them of the human race and how nutritious you all would be to them. They feed on the infidel miners and drivers to increase their own strength. My voice is the only thing they will listen to."

A boot pulled back slowly, then slammed hard into the side of the machine; if anyone else had done this it would have done nothing. Tavish was a Spartan however, and quite a big one; Adrianna's image actually disappeared with a soft "blip" for a moment, then came back to life again. For one moment, since she'd crashed, Adrianna had been knocked out. "Then what's the point in keeping you around?" his face was sudden a lot nastier, as if these words had been her final ones "If you're going to start a war between two species and gloat over the fact you told them to eat people... why not just stomp you out right now hmmm? You've SERVED your purpose, ruining all those lives. If you're so determined to be nothing but an insane hologram, never wanting to be more humane, why shouldn't we just kill you right now and make a carbon copy which does what we want? You think they'd honestly tell the difference? Ohhh Addy, you don't know the hell you brought when you thought that treating people like food was a good idea."

When Adrianna came back, she was smiling. "If I had served my purpose I would already be erased. There is something that your command still has planned for me, and because of that I am allowed to live and nothing you can do will change that." She ran her hands down her robes and patted at them as if knocking off dust. "And I didn't start a war, your fellow Spartan did. The second she killed one of my high priests and stole me from my temple, she sealed Earth's fate. My only concern is the well-being of my children and me getting back to them. I don't care what they have to eat, or how many of your kind they have to kill to survive. Your kind has done the same to so many forms of life, how dare you pass judgement on me."

"You made this war the moment you made them eat humans" Tavish said, almost a growl as he looked at Adrianna. A smile crossed his lips however, a very evil looking one "And you see... thing is... I'm borderline section eight. They've got watches on me all the time, making sure I don't snap." He leant forward slowly, as if going in to whisper in Adrianna's ear "But they stopped... just long enough for me to see you." The grin was twisted as he gazed across at Adrianna "They're probably expecting me to rip you to pieces... and I was thinking about it since I came in. I like to get to KNOW the people I'm about to kill first. And let me tell you... you're nothing remarkable."

Adrianna moved towards him till she was infront of his face. "Then do it." She said, poking him in the nose. "Pull the plug. Destroy me, kill me, erase me, whatever it is you call it. My children will never stop killing till I am recovered and they are not as stupid as you believe. They will not fall for a fake copy of me." She leaned in closer, "I. Am. God."

Tavish kept his grin at her, then tutted softly "And to a mechanic as well. Bad form." He reached down, he'd just come out of the garage and he still had a few of his tools on him. The flat head screwdriver that came out looked like like it could have been used as a weapon. "I've always wanted to kill a God" he said as he suddenly dug the blade down, like a dagger being slammed into a sacrificial heart. The front panel popped off after a sudden grunt, the inner structure becoming exposed to this "heathen" "We've got a long time Addy, shall we see if you feel some remorse after feeling the pain you've put others through? I can do that you know..." He knelt down in front of her, out of sight, reaching for another tool already.

Adrianna sat down cross-legged and watched. "Do your worst infidel. I do not fear you. My death will make me a martry to my children and fuel them beyond a quest to find me and on to a mission of genocide."

As Tavish started messing with the console, several of the people in the room started casting concerned looks.

"Who said you're going to die? That's way too easy, and you might come as useful bait later" Tavish reached inside, gripping around the 'heart' of the machine "I'm just going to make you wish you'd died in the crash." He carefully reached forward with a tool, making a tiny nick in the rubber of one of the lines. He pushed it against a metal casing and watched; the current going through it was becoming sporadic now, and Adrianna found herself cutting out every few seconds. She'd come back just long enough to see Tavish's eyes glaring up at her, then disappear in a flash of shorting out. From what he'd heard the act of shorting out again and again was quite painful to AIs, a bit like dying again and again, or suffering from sudden and quite painful seizures.

As Tavish tortured the A.I., a firm hand gripped his shoulder. "I think you should stop now before we have to get the Admiral involved." came the voice of one of the male Marines that provide security for the command center.

"Hmm? why should I do that?" Tavish asked, raising an eyebrow at the guy; he could punch his lights out in a second, but he didn't want to. "She's feeding people to these slimes. She's started a fight, and I bet if she had her way she'd sit back and watch everything die for her own amusement." He waited for the soft 'blink' noise as she shut off again before saying "And she won't die. I'm just gonna shake her up."

"I am just following my orders. I'm not supposed to let anyone to tamper with the console or the A.I." The Marine said "You can talk to it all you want, but no tampering with it."

Tavish sighed, then looked at the blinking AI "Fine..." He reached inside again and pulled the wire away so the console stopped shorting out, standing up and tucking his tools away "You're lucky I like people Addy, or that could have gone a lot worse for you."

Adrianna looked up at him, her hair in disarray and the remnants of pain on her face. "I'm sure."

Tavish shrugged at her, leaning back, putting his hands behind his head "Interesting thing pain... one of the worst things to happen to people, but it also gives life meaning... Avoid pain, gain happiness... well I think you've been without pain for quite a bit. So how are you feeling now?"

"I am feeling just fine now." She said standing up from her spot on the floor. "How are you feeling, now knowing that you cannot touch me?"

Tavish smirked in response, and judging from the look in his eyes she was wrong right now. "So why so vindictive towards humans Addy? Violence begets violence after all. You start this war, we capture you... and well, you know there's going to be retribution." Tavish tutted his tongue "why did you make your followers attack the species that invented the expression 'an eye for an eye'?"

"I have nothing against the human's except for their glaring blasphemy and their obvious weaknesses." Adrianna said, "My children are the superior race in comparison and thus feed on the weak. Survival of the fittest."

"Your 'children' got stomped all over with big heavy boots the moment they actually got into a fight" Tavish said, shaking his head at the AI "You're not a god... if you are, well then you've just met your own version of the devil right here." He let out a soft laugh, a small grin spreading over his face "You're powerless. You're weak. You're going to see your children die for what you have done, I'm going to make sure of that. You're going to see every one I kill and then... you're going to be shut off."

"My children were defeated because they were caught off guard. They know what you are and what you are capable of now. You will lose many of your friends." She said.

"They had us locked up, outnumbered and unarmed. Your children are just that. Children. We've killed so many of your followers Addy, bombed them from orbit as well... it would be easier if you actually convinced them to surrender" Tavish sighed and shook his head "You see, I'm not evil. I'm just on the other side. I'm not even a general, I'm the other side who's going to have to fight and die for this stupid war. And I decided that you're going to do more than sit there and laugh as your followers die."

"Death is something that I accept, and I know that more of my children will be killed in this unfortunate spat. Are you prepared to handle the death of those you know?" She said walking back and forth on the terminal. "Because for every one of my children that you humans cut down, two of you will be killed."

"Yup" Tavish said, staring right at the hologram "I'm one of the soldiers. You think I haven't come to terms with the fact that loved ones are going to die? For god sake Addy I'm a wheel man, I'm the guy who gets into people's bases and drives others out. You think I haven't seen my fair share of death? And you just think that your children who die are 'unfortunate'? You don't care for them at all."

"I care about them greatly, I just know that those who die fighting are in a better place now then this war torn universe." Adrianna said, "And that is why I have approved a measure to bring this war to an end even faster."

Suddenly, the fire alarms began to blare all over the facility. A calm feminine voice came over the speakers in between appropriately space alarm screams, "Please make for the nearest exit and follow evacuation plan Foxtrot and proceed to the hangar."

"You think that would work?" Tavish said staring at the AI and not budging "You think trying to kill some people will end a war? You started this Addy, you started something terrible and painful, and you're going to know that sending people through hell just to get to a better place is even worse than killing them yourself."

Adrianna didnt say anything as one of the computer techs came over. "I'm sorry sir, but in accordance with evacuation plan Foxtrot I have to shut down all the electronic equipment, and that includes this A.I. terminal."

"No chances" Tavish said, looking up at the tech who just came over "You head out, I'll shut this down, ok? I'm a Spartan, I can run through the doors after they close them, you get out there while I sort this digital mess up out." He moved down towards the loose panel, opening it up again and barely looking at the tech as he said "That's an order too! So you can't get in trouble for following it."

The tech stood there for a moment trying to decide if it would come back on him if he didn't do what to plan ordered. In the end he left it be and moved off with the rest of the techs. "You really should go with them, instead of trying to torture little ol' defenseless me."

"Not torturing. Not yet anyway, I think you've had a nice shock to remind you of your vulnerability. I'm actually going to save you!" Tavish grinned at the AI, stuck his tongue out for a second, then moved back underneath the terminal. He found the heart of it, with the frayed wire that he had sliced to make the AI get some nasty shocks. He opened it slowly, the AI disappearing from the large monitor as tavish removed the small transportable device that the AI came on. Usually stuff like this had a small hologram and speaker device in it, just the basics, but it looked old... Tavish examined it as he stood up, wondering if Addy would suddenly pop out of no where.

The device was, unfortunately not one with a speaker or hologram device, if Tavish wanted to continue to speak to her then he would have to put her in his helmet. From behind him Tavish heard Aaron's voice, "Shaft! Come on, leave the little glitch and let's go!" before he left with the others to the Spartan Hangar

Considering Tavish wasn't too happy to have the little thing inside his head right now he decided to just carry it for the moment. He wasn't going to have her screaming at him while he tried to figure out what was wrong. turning around, he left to go respond to his boss.

---

Halo C.E. RPG
- Spartan Command