The Shadows In The Dark

Chapter Five

Victor sighed as another chair was thrown past his head, hitting the one-way glass window behind him. "Vex, would you please stop doing that? It's getting old."

The large Sangheili spun towards the boy, throwing his arms above his head with an aggravated yell. "Stop? Why don't you get up and do something?!"

Victor sat up on his bench, rubbing at his temples as a headache started to form. "Vex, I don't want to be here just as much as you don't. But throwing things isn't going to help us. We just have to wait until someone comes back."

After stating that Victor and Vex would be "rejoining the UNSC", the captain and doctor quickly fled as Vex started to fume. They had narrowly avoided the first onslaught of chairs, and hadn't returned in what felt like a few hours. 

Letting out another frustrated cry, Vex finally left the chair alone. Angrily stomping over to his previous seat, he sat down with a loud thud.

"I can't believe this. What do these humans think they're doing? I am not joining the UNSC, and we are not staying on this ship of crazy people! I will break us out of here, and I will rip that stupid smile off of that idiotic mans face!"

While Vex talked, he got increasingly worked up again, to the point where he was yelling in anger. He jumped up from his seat and rushed for the chair, screaming at the window.

Victor sighed in annoyance as another thud echoed through the room.

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Tor'Valen again stood in the cockpit of the Phantom, this time speaking directly through the comm system.

In English, he finished recapping the recent events. "After seeing what laid inside, I returned to the ship to contact you."

"Uh huh." Domins voice came from the speaker, laced with what seemed like thinly veiled confusion and annoyance. "Today's been really....interesting, hasn't it? Well, I'll send Etain over when she's available, along with an escort, to check their vital signs. If they are alive, and sane, having a Spartan always makes things more fun."

Tor'Valen nodded to himself, recalling the many times he had encountered the fearsome warriors on the battlefield. 

Domin spoke again, drawing the old Sangheili out of his memories. "In the meantime, I'd like you to take an inventory of the supplies still in the ship. Anything that we could use could prove useful. And if you get time, attempt to analyze if you could repair the ship to a functioning state. Even if it doesn't prove to be mobile, if we could restore gravity and airflow to it, it could become a storage area and garrison."

Tor'Valen thought for a while on that, finally responding to the captain. "I will have my warriors search the ship. In the meantime, I will determine if the ship is salvageable. A large section of the command bridge is missing, but if I could get enough systems running, I might be able to route the main controls to another area."

He could feel Domin's smile coming through the comm. "Perfect. If anyone can repair it, you can. Good luck, and let me know when you have more to report. I have an angsty teenager and an enraged Sangheili to deal with. I'm not sure which is more scary."

"Understood. Good luck, captain."

The comm clicked off, signaling that their contact had ended.

Turning around and stalking out of the ship, he started assigning orders to his brethren. He spent the next few hours wandering the ship, checking its interior workings. While it looked very beat up from the outside, the inside was relatively intact (not including the missing section of the bridge). If he could organize enough workers, and receive the right parts, he could probably manage to partially restore the ship to operation. Getting it to move again would take time and resources he couldn't acquire, but that wasn't his main objective anyway.