Halo: The Dunes of 2560

Chapter 4: Pilot 3

They wandered through hallways, until they got to a door that said on the side on a chiseled block, "Bridge." Vixon stood right in front of the door, and it just opens, "Huh, I thought I'd have to break this one down too." "That would be quite unnecessary." The voice came from inside the Bridge, Vixon aims his gun, so do the rest. The Bridge was dark but the windows lit up parts of it, while whoever sat in the chair in front of them remained hidden, the person in the chair exclaims, "Lights!" And the lights turned on, and they just see a spartan with a weird helmet in the chair. Vixon examines him from a distance, "He's unarmed." They put their weapons away, David approaches, "Alright, you the pilot of this thing?" The helmet of the man in the chair lights up, with animated eyes, "Yep. I'm Pilot." David looks at the helmet, "Weird helmet, I can see eyes." Pilot tilts his head as he looks at David, "Yeah, my eyes." David slaps his hand on Pilot's visor, "What the fuck?" Pilot doesn't resist, "I'm assuming you 6 need a lift, since you're on the run, am I wrong?"

Down in the hangar outside of the vessel, Stripe is on a private call with SFA Command, the other ODST's stand at the hangar door, while Stripe stands by the small room that they were in earlier. SFA Command is asking Stripe questions, "With them being inside of the Vessel, do you believe they will find out how it works?" Stripe whispers, "No. But the problem, is Pilot 3 is inside." The speaker squeals with an enraged slamming sound, Stripe recoils, "You need to destroy it! Now!" SFA Command tunes out, Stripe looks up at the Vessel, and wonders how.

"Look, if you don't take us out of here right now, we'll just kill you and figure it out on our own. Or we'll go down there and kill them, I hate threatening people but this seems to be the only course of action I can take here." David is interrogating Pilot right now, but Pilot's animated eyes on his visor just blink. Red speaks up, "You take us out of here, we promise to keep your out of trouble, we will take all responsibility." Pilot looks up at Red, "Really? You will do that?" Red nods, "I know how this all goes, you won't budge until we make you a promise you can't refuse. We could tear you apart but never get anywhere, except inducing horrible pain and misery on you. I don't want to do that." Pilot looks down, "I will only get us out of here if you really will take all responsibility for this act of defection." Candy scoffs, "Defection!? We're not defectors, we are escaping because we're being hunted down by the UNSC and SFA!" Pilot shakes his head, "Couldn't be! You want to go to the Covenant!" David shushes everyone before they get worked up and start yelling, "Listen Pilot. I don't know your name, who you are, or even what program you're from. I can see you're pretending to be naive, you're saying you don't even know the UNSC or the SFA by saying it could not be possible they'd be hunting us." Pilot's hands get clammy, he continues, "How I see it, you know something, or better yet, you've been hurt too." Pilot curls up a fist, and sighs, "Fuck, alright look, I just don't want to end up like the other two." Vixon steps forward, "What happened to them?" "They were tortured and killed because they failed their missions. And I have failed mine. The SFA is going to kill me for this." Vixon nods, "They killed my family." Pilot looks up at Vixon, and without saying anything more, he places his left hand, a robotic hand, on the control panel, and the whole room lights up blue, "Where are we going?"

Stripe and the other ODST's have Spartan Lasers aimed at the Vessel, they start charging, but before they could fire, the Vessel lifts up slightly, and vanishes in the blink of an eye, their Lasers blast at the roof of Hangar 8. Stripe drops his Laser and looks around, the others ODST's are terrified.

The platoon relax, sitting down in random chairs around the Bridge, Pilot turns, "Do not touch anything please. Not that it would matter, I have full control, so all the controls are useless for any of you." Vixon looks down at the control panel, and sees random buttons being pressed, and a flashing screen, "How are you able to control every aspect of this thing?" Pilot lets go of the control panel, and the window shows that they are in space, "I am Pilot 3 of this Vessel, known as The Space Bender, or in short, SB-1. I am a specially augmented individual who is one with SB-1, I have a robotic arm that connects my brain and nervous system with the ship's entire computer systems." Vixon nods, skeptical, "There's something you won't tell us. It's fine. There's better conversation to be had elsewhere." Pilot tilts his head, as Vixon turns to David, "Soooo... David..." He looks up at Vixon, as he removes his helmet, motioning for David to remove his too, he does. David looks embarrassed, "I have a lot of explaining to do." Everyone turns to David, he continues, "I was shot down there in the hangar, in the back. I was shot in the back, but I am perfectly okay, I am uninjured. It's because I have special augmentations given to me by the SFA when I had nearly died." Vixon rubs his eyes, feeling ashamed of himself, "Fuck, I'm so dumb." David shakes his head, "No, you had every right to put me in the spotlight Vix. I was dumb to think I could hide something so important from you all."