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Everybody has to eat, even super serious Spartan-II's.

The Chief's in the mess hall, sitting by himself and working his way through a ration of tasteless nutrient mush while working on something on his omnicomm. The Chief's never been one to really take refuge in the sensoriums to make food taste better, he's gotten used to it and doesn't even think about it much.

He's not unaware of what's going on around him, but he has most of the comings and goings of the room basically tuned out.

This means someone should bother him, y/n?

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"Supposedly there's been a hybrid Ohm aboard the ship, but that was before my time. The rest of the crew had to kill it," says the Chief.

"I was on the first shore team the ship sent down a couple of months ago. We found remnants of a distress signal, and my team located a spent nanite bomb."

He doesn't like thinking about that mission much. Between one member almost getting killed and Samus striking out on her own, things on his team went Rather Awry.

"We've also been in the Bleed most of the time, and if that works anything like Slipspace, you can't fight in it."

This has bothered him too, though. Mostly because he suspects that if all of this is true, their survival so far is mostly due to luck and going unnoticed.

"Before your time. That's convenient." He frowned. "What did the distress signal say? Are the Ohm the only ones who can make nanite bombs? If they destroy dimensions, why was there even a distress signal or bomb residue left?"

The Chief can't argue with the convenience of that. Or that the ship couldn't have altered the others' memories, she seems to have no problems doing that besides.

"They don't kill dimensions. Just worlds," he says. "They hunt down and destroy sentient life. That's why they used a nanite bomb. Set it to target humans and let it loose, problem solved."

He sounds rather grim. The Chief's not one to soften the truth, or what he's fairly certain is the truth. Ben's obviously not a little kid, so he'll be level with him.

"As for the message... I think I still have that. It was a warning."

The Chief's made a habit of keeping dumps of his helmet's logs to his omnicomm. He was wearing his suit during that mission, even though he hadn't been given full time access back. He pushes the current file aside and flicks through his archive.

"Here. Comm audio's not great, I'd take it to media if you want it clearer."

A message plays. It's in even worse "condition" than it already was, due to the omnicomm's very meager audio capacity. It sounds heavily digitized with an odd, blearing effect to the sound.

"--last log of Captain Amadeus Privost. I've volunteered to stay behind in my fighter to coordinate the last of the evacuation efforts and to transmit this to every operating communications outpost on every planet still in communication with the Alliance, so that they broadcast this warning as long as they're functional. -kssh- They came from nowhere. The Black, the outskirts, the sectors of the Multiverse that are mapped as uninhabited. They came without warning, they attacked without mercy. -kssh- were warned by our interdimensional allies the Da-krssh-g but we barely had time to evacuate. Millions. Millions gone in just hours. -kssh- Nanite device in Pleirdes Swamp--they were biological in nature, we couldn't stop them with EMPs, with anything. -kssshck- Swept through the world in a gray cloud. Targeted the major cities first--only targeted humanoid beings, instead of all organic life. People just...disappeared. The cloud swept over them and they were gone. Just...gone. We've gotten word that the colony on Mars has been attacked and destroyed the same way, the other planets in the Alliance, all -kssssh-. The Vespar managed to destroy the nanites but were nuked from orbit with point-singularity weapons. The -kssh- have offered us refuge, helped the survivors of our worlds evacuate from this dimension."

The voice is desperate.

"-ksssh- this is not -kssh- SOS or a request for aid. this is a warning. If you have landed on our world, evacuate immediately, to the nearest parallel dimension. This entire universe is now classified an interdimensional hot zone, charted as dangerous on all interdimensional maps. They've found it. They've found it and just like every other dimension they've found, they won't tolerate any sentient life besides themselves. If your universe has interdimensional defenses, keep them ready. If they're breached, evacuate your worlds before it's too late. -kssh-y won't stop. The Ohm won't stop until they're the last ones left in the Multiverse. They -kssh-"

That's all there is. All the static is lost data.

"The system this was on was pretty degraded. I'm surprised we got that much out of it."

Ben sat back as the audio dissolved into static. So it wasn't that the whole galaxy was gone, just the thousands of sentient species in it -- well, if the whole thing hadn't been faked.

Is that why I'm so calm about thousands of trillions of sentients dying? Because I'm still suspicious of the whole thing? Or is it something the ship did? If it can mind-rub the crew... He shook that thought away. His goal was to find out facts.

"And no one knows why they feel that way," he frowned. "The Ohm, I mean."

"The Daligig told us they've always been warlike, but they don't know a whole lot either. I have a log of that in here too."

This is why the Chief does things like this. They're useful. He goes looking for the file, it's lumped in with the events surrounding the push to the bridge of the ship, so it'll take him a moment to clear all of that out. It's also a comparatively long log, too.

In the meantime, he talks. "We don't know their reasons, and the Daligig at least claim not to. I can believe it, though. Before my universe got stripped, we'd just come out of a war with a religious coalition of about eight or so different alien species that decided humanity needed wiped out."

The war. It seemed so small in comparison to all of this, so very very small and so much more solvable... Okay, he's found the start of it. He starts clipping out the relevant section, stripping off unnecessary parts. His own vitals... motion tracker data... weapons and shield monitoring... He'll leave the video on this one, though. Bad for size, but pretty necessary in this.

"You'll probably have to take this one to media," he remarks.

Ben nodded. "I was born in the middle of the Yuuzhan Vong War. They destroyed their galaxy and came to wipe out and enslave the sentients in ours. Three hundred sixty-five trillion people died. But there was a reason they were warlike -- and knowing that helped negotiate the peace. That's why I want to find out about the Ohm." Well, that and the possibility of finding something interesting about the ship along the way.

The Chief finishes scrubbing the file. "Got your comm on you?" he asks Ben. "It's kind of a big clip and I might as well give it to you." He's already making plans to distribute it.

And... wait a second, Skywalker. It's a bit of a delayed reaction, but it occurs to him that this name is familiar.

"...And you wouldn't be related to a Luke, would you?"

Ben handed the device over. "My dad. I get that a lot."

The Chief transfers the log over.

"Small multiverse."

He hands the omnicomm back, the screen showing confirmation that it has received WhyAreWeHere.mjl.

"That's the log from when we broke through to the bridge. Ran out a bunch of space pirates that'd hijacked the ship. It was... messy. They corrupted one of the ship AI's and he let a bunch of zombies out of quarantine into the pod caverns when we moved for the bridge. Killed several thousand."

"Then we got Stacy's personality rebooted and she patched us through to the Daligig."

"Thanks. Seems like it took a lot of trouble to get." Ben took his first mouthful of nutrigoo and winced. "Sounds like you trust the ship."

"She hasn't tried to kill us. If anything, she's been protecting us. But she also uses us."

He exhales, brow furrowing. "And we don't know what for. Not yet."

"I trust her enough to sleep at night, but I don't think she's always square with us. Especially the Warden personality."

"I want to know what for," said Ben bluntly. "I'm not interested in fighting the ship's crusade war without all the facts."

"We're working on it," the Chief replies. "We got held up for a while by a nightmare god. Wasn't pleasant."

"It also doesn't help that the ship's not real forthcoming. We get Daligig transmissions sometimes. My hopes right now are on landing on a settled world, apparently there are hubs. We might be able to get information."

"Or a world that doesn't know anything about the Daligig," he noted. "But hey, maybe they'll have food."

"Most likely food," he agrees.

"Anything else I can help you with?"

"Not unless you've got more answers about the ship and the Ohm," Ben shrugged.

"I've told you what I've got," the Chief replies. He looks down at his omnicomm. Now that he has these files out...

Here's some work to be done.

"Everything else is mostly "some bad thing on the ship tries to kill us and we stop it"."

"The Nightmare King," Ben nodded. "What else?"

"Giant cockroaches, brain controlling slugs, zombies and space pirates, and occasionally each other," he lists.

He raises and lowers a shoulder. "Welcome to the Transmigration 9."

Ben let out a long, low whistle. "You guys keep busy."

"Well, you remember what I said about going crazy."

"Right," he nodded, then paused. "What kind of support staff does the ship's command have?"

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