It looks just like the Earth… more or less.

Cortana's observation registered in her own mind, as she managed what was left of the Forward Unto Dawn's telescopic sensors. Confined as she was to the surviving computer systems of the ship's blasted hulk, her comment was heard by no one but herself.

She glanced away from the viewscreen which had shown her the strangely Earth-like planet which the Dawn had been orbiting for the last seventy-two hours. Behind her was John, sleeping like a log in the Cryo-chamber he had crawled into more than a year ago. Her holographic avatar bit its lip. She missed him.

"Wake me when you need me."

That's what John –Chief– had said to her before he went under. And she hadn't needed him since then.

Or rather, he hadn't needed her to need him. As long as they were totally devoid of any chance of rescue, with no hope of a response to their distress beacon, which had played non-stop across every available channel for the past year, he didn't need her. He only needed her to be ready when it was time to go home.

And that time wasn't now.

Beep-beep-beep beeeeeeeeeeeep… Boop. Crackle-crackle BOOOOOOOOOOOP.

The strange, static-laced electronic gibberish startled Cortana, bringing her back to reality. It had come over the Dawn's com channel, and it was coming from the planet below.

Cortana took another look at the grainy photographs and video which the ship's damaged telescopes and cameras had managed to take. Their orbit around the planet hadn't managed to find anything visible on it's surface other than the usual geographic features –mountains, oceans, deserts, forests– and no sign of human settlement that the Dawn's limited means of detection could find.

But now, the most recent bit of video detected a distinctly human feature: a city.

A very, very large city.

Cortana peered downward. The city was gargantuan in size, and considering the planet's relative small size in comparison to Earth or even Reach or Mars, that probably meant even more to the city's inhabitants.

And there were inhabitants. After all, who -or what- could be sending out this garbled, staccato signal over the Dawn's radio channel?

Cortana played back the signal which was coming from some point on the planet below. It was indeed gibberish. But it was clearly received gibberish. If gibberish could be codified into a language, this bit would be the most fluent of its kind.

The logical response was to attempt to broadcast the Dawn's distress signal through the channel toward the planet. But then, the gibberish stopped.

A minute went by. Then two minutes. Then three. Four.

And it began again. It continued to spew forth, beeping and booping and crackling.

Examining the signal further, Cortana raised an eyebrow in perplexity. The radio waves which she was receiving from the plant below weren't being emitted from a cacophony of competing voices, as one might find above a human colony or within a Covenant battle cluster. There was only this one stream of transmission. And it apparently, it could only transmit primitive electronic signals, like a telegraph.

Telegraph, thought Cortana. We're dealing with a pre-digital civilization. Perhaps a new alien species? A Covenant outpost? Brutes? Grunts?

Cortana looked back at John. At Chief. The Chief. He lied steadily in his cold, metal resting place. Her eyes played across the control panel, looking at the button which would unseal the hatch.

Only one way to find out.

"Eh… okay. It's pretty neat."

"Neat indeed! If we could find out how far these signals could be transmitted, all sorts of possibilities could open up!"

"You're beginning to sound like King Bumi, Mech."

"Ah! Thank you!"

In the backyard of the house which had he had been given to the Mechanist by the Earth King, Sokka looked up at the large, wooden pole which his friend had raised up from the ground. It had strands of copper wire and hunks of iron bound to it by rope and cords, and a similar pole stood in the backyard of another house a block away.

The Mechanist's neighbors in Ba Sing Se's upper ring had welcomed the new resident's experiments with amusement and raised eyebrows. But when Mechanist ("Mech" to Sokka) had begin going door-to-door to ask his new neighbors if he could mount a second large pole in their backyard, they began to develop a marked annoyance at their eccentric neighbor's antics.

It finally took Sokka's help to convince the eleventh person Mech had asked about the matter with the pole to help them with their new experiment. This man, a retired Earth Kingdom customs official, happened to be music box enthusiast, and shared the Mechanist's interest in the type of machinery that made such devices tick. Thus, the second pole was built, and the experiment was conducted.

"We can now send electronic signals from one point to another!" said Mech with his excitement. "If we could develop some sort of code, we could send messages back and forth!"

"Like during an emergency," said Sokka.

"Yes! If there was a tsunami coming, or a hostile army, or some other threat, a person at the scene could summon help instantaneously from another place a hundred miles away!"

"You sure you aren't being just a little optimistic?" said Sokka. "I mean, Mister Hu's house is at the end of the street. How does that extend to a distance that big?"

"Oh, we'll have to do more testing," said Mechanist, taking the small, electronic switch he had built for the occasion. "Work out a code of some kind like I mentioned, set up a way for someone else at the other end to broadcast back, that sort of thing. In fact, I was thinking of one just now. It would be as series of short signals, followed by a series of long signals, and then we could work out a cyber indicating a combination of such signals corresponding to letters of the alpha—"

"Sokka!"

Sokka, whose brain had begun to come around to Mech's way of thinking, jerked his head around toward the back door of the house. Katara.

"Yeah, Katara?" he said.

Katara called out, a smile on her face. "I hate to interrupt your bit of fun, but our meeting with the Council of Five, Zuko, dad, and the Earth King is in ten minutes!"

"Ah great," said Sokka. Turning to Mech, he said to him, "I'll check in with you and Teo tomorrow. I promise you, I think this sounds really great." A hearty handshake from Mech, and he ran off to follow Katara back to the front.

Mech, left to his own devices, stared at the switch. "Now then," he said to himself, "how to make such a code work…?" Thinking for a moment, he tapped on the switch three times fast. Another bit of thinking. He tapped on the switch three more times, only on each time, he held down the switch a little longer. Then three more quick taps.

Shrugging his shoulders, he went back inside the house. "What should we have for dinner, Teo?" he called. "Isn't Mei-ying coming by later?"

The room was very large, very empty, and very smelly. It smelled like money.

"As you can see, your majesty, we are broke." Chien's voice echoed in the empty treasury vault, with Aang still scrunching up his nose at the room's former contents. Beside him stood Earth King Kuei, and in front of him stood Chien, a very fat man.

Chien, the Earth Kingdom's Finance Minister, had insisted on giving Kuei the grand tour of the Ministry of Finance building as part of his presentation on the state of the Earth Kingdom's budget. The situation, insofar as Aang could grasp, was not good.

As Chien's monotonous voice droned on about deficits, assets, and debt, Aang glanced behind him at Katara. Katara nodded at him, smiling.

Aang turned back, trying to listen to Chien. He was looking forward to his planned dinner with her, Sokka, Toph, and Hakoda this evening.

Then he gulped. Hakoda. He hadn't told him about his and Katara's… new relationship status. He'd talked with Hakoda in the past about perfunctory matters of military logistics during the Invasion, but they had never had time to get up close and personal. When Aang had first met the Water Tribe chieftain face-to-face, Hakoda has been kind, but also busy with trying to escape detection by the Fire Nation while coordinating and planning the already ad hoc invasion at the same time. They'd exchanged even briefer greetings during the Day of Black Sun, and again when Sokka and Zuko liberated him from prison.

Aang tried to listen to Chien's monologue. He'd wanted to accommodate Kuei, who had personally requested the presence of Team Avatar at not only this meeting, but several others. "Sure!" Aang has said. "It's not like we have anything else to do."

Behind Aang and Katara were the Council of Five, and behind them were Sokka and Toph, Sokka seeming far more interested in what was going on than any of the other four friends, while Toph wasn't even trying not to nod off. The Earth Kingdom generals on the Council of Five stood by, taciturn and quiet, each voicing only the occasional question. The newly reformed Earth Kingdom government was turning heavily on them, and they were taking their responsibilities with even more sobriety than usual.

Trying to look like he was paying attention, Aang couldn't help but try and recall was little he knew about Water Tribe betrothal customs. Yuei was sixteen when she was about to get married, he thought, and Katara's almost fifteen and I'm almost… a hundred-and-thirteen, I guess… But would Hakoda even recognize Northern Water Tribe customs? Monkey-feathers. I wonder if Roku knows anything about this…

"Avatar? Pardon me, Avatar?"

Aang was suddenly jolted back to the present, now realizing that Kuei had just asked him a question. "Eh, yes your majesty?" he said brightly, forcing a smile.

"Oh, I just had a question," he said. "This new initiative, the Harmony Restoration Project, will require funds that must be acquired through taxation. Do you think you could work with your friend King Bumi to persuade him to get the other Earth Kingdom states on board with such a plan?"

"Eh… sure, I guess," said Aang. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted one of the generals, How, crack an indulgent smile. Chien only cocked his head to one side. The dull, fat bureaucrat seemed sympathetic to Aang's plight.

The said dull, fat bureaucrat then spoke up. "Yes, King Bumi has a reputation among Earth Kingdom nobility for his financial expertise. Under his administration, the City of Omashu didn't have a single budget shortfall for forty years prior to its capture by the Fire Nation."

Would Bumi really have the patience to sit still for something like this? thought Aang. He swallowed the thought, and then replied. "Bumi's a smart guy," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he knows a lot about this sort of thing. He knows a lot about… a lot of things."

Aang's comment must have sounded a lot smarter than he himself thought it did. "Very well then," said Chien. "Let us continue the tour."

Two hours later, it was the middle of the afternoon and Kuei's company had emerged from the cavernous basement of the Finance Ministry building. It was in the upper ring, and Aang and Katara had dropped back with Toph and Sokka to compare notes.

"Sheesh," said Sokka. "I knew that Long Feng was a bad guy, but I didn't think he was dumb enough to delegate something like military spending to someone with, y'know, no military experience."

"Yeah, sure…" said Aang. "Um… that's bad, right?"

"Heh, understatement of the year," said Sokka. "It was Joo De or… one of the Joo De's, who wound up with the job. She refused to approve new funding for overland travel research, giving the Fire Nation a leg-up when they were developing the Drill, and if the Navy had been given the resources they needed to build more ships, then they could have bought more time to relieve the siege of Omashu, and that's all without discussing the complete breakdown of communications with the Northern Water Tri—"

"I think we get the idea, Sokka," said Katara, patting her brother on the shoulder. Turning to Aang, she grasped his hand in hers, and Aang felt his troubles beginning to go away. "We should probably get back to house. We'll want to get ready for dinner with dad after his big meeting with the Council of Grumpiness."

Aang snickered at this bit. "Good one Katara," he said, grasping her hand just a little tighter. Just then, they noticed that Sokka wasn't with them anymore. He had stopped a few spaces behind them, looking up at the sky for some reason.

"What are you looking at?" said Toph. She had been pretty quiet for most of the afternoon. Her parents had arrived in Ba Sing Se last week, and their ongoing talks were getting better. But not a lot better.

Sokka pointed upward with one hand, shielding his eyes against the sun with the other. "I just… I thought I saw something up in the sky. Something… silver and black and grey."

Aang looked up, peering into the sky, shielding his eyes. Up above, the sky was pockmarked with streams of cloud, an indication of the approach of Autumn. But sure enough, there was a vague, silvery dot floating in the sky, barely visible against the clouds.

"Huh," said Aang. "That's odd. Not even Appa could fly that high. Could it be a Fire Nation airship?"

"Nope, wouldn't work," said Sokka. "Whatever that thing is… it's really, really high up."

The group stood in silence for a moment, looking upward, before Katara spotted the Earth King and the Generals about to turn a corner. "Kuei's leaving us behind, guys," she said. "We'd better catch up."

The group mumbled in agreement and they continued onward. Aang, meanwhile, mulled over in his head what he'd say to Hakoda. Hakoda, I… no, Chief Hakoda, I… Chief Hakoda, I love Katara… No no, Chief Hakoda, your daughter is very important to me and I…

Aang shook his head, glancing over at Katara. She looked so beautiful in the sunlight. "Katara?" he said to her.

"Yes, Aang?"

"We… we really need to talk."

The first thing Master Chief heard was the wiring and hissing of his cryo-chamber opening. He shook his head, long accustomed to the standard bleariness that came with awakening from cryostasis. He repositioned his slightly askew helmet and pulled himself out of the pod.

In front of him was Cortana's shining blue avatar, mounted on the pedestal in the middle of the cryo-chamber, right where had left her. He felt the mild nausea that accompanied a zero-gravity environment, but ignored it. "Cortana," he said.

"Rise and shine, Chief," she said with a smile. "I need you."

Chief nodded, instinctively reaching for the rifle he had stored next to the pod. He pried it loose, and checked to make sure it wasn't jammed.

Cortana continued to speak. "We've possibly come in contact with a non-Covenant alien civilization."

"Non-Covenant."

"Yes. Its technology is ancient, maybe even pre-digital. There are signs of some kind of civilization down there, on the planet we're orbiting. Here, check this out."

A digital video projection appeared next to Cortana in the HUD embedded in Chief's helmet. It showed a large city, roughly circular, with a wall surrounding it, in the northeastern part of a large continent.

"I heard a comm signal being emitted from down below," she said. "It was staticky and garbled, but it was still signal. Radio."

Chief, in his customary reticence, nodded his head, inspecting the video feed. It reminded him of the Great Wall of China.

"If there's something down there, and they're capable of communicating with us, then we might be able to find a way to get back to Earth," said Cortana. "If not, then at least the Dawn will still be sending out our distress signal. Plus, I think we both agree that being marooned down there sure beats being marooned up here."

His assault rifle at the ready, Chief took Cortana's data chip and put it into the back of his helmet. "Great to be back in here," said Cortana. "Now, get to the Dawn's orbital drop pods. I'd advise loading them with some extra weapons and supplies. We can jettison them all down to the planet's surface at once so we can establish a base camp."

Wading through the ship's zero-gravity enviros, Chief followed Cortana's instructions to the letter. The Dawn had plenty of weapons stored aboard her, left over from the battle at the Ark. In the back of his mind, he wondered if Arbiter had managed to get to safety. He hoped so.

"How long have I been asleep?" he said to Cortana.

"About a year," she said. "Have any good dreams?"

"No."

"Bad dreams?"

"Maybe."

"Well, maybe you'll be able to get some natural shut-eye when we get down there," she said.

"That would be nice."

"Good. I'm glad we're on the same page."

The pods, now well-secured and filled with weapons and a few boxes of dried goods that Chief had managed to find, were ready to drop.

"We'll be dropping near that city we spotted," said Cortana. "If it's inhabited, and it possibility isn't, we'll hopefully find some friendlies."

"Alien friendlies?"

"Well, if they're either not Covenant or pre-digital, then we can at least hope for the best."

"We can."

Strapped into his pod, Cortana activated the ship's drop systems automatically, and Chief felt the pods about to drop. "Well, here goes everything," said she.

Chief steeled himself for the sudden shift in gravity and force that accompanied such drops. He waited.

And then it came.

He saw the vacuum of space, black and filled with stars, staring back at him from the other side of the orbital drop pod. The last time he'd taken a ride on one of these things was during the assault on Delta Halo, directly after leaving New Mombasa. That was almost exactly a year ago, but it felt like an eternity had passed between then and now. The seconds ticked by, and he saw the other pods, six or so, that had been dropped from the remains of the Dawn.

Then he saw the planet. They passed the cloud line, and he began to take in the landscape. It was… beautiful. Endless miles of untouched natural beauty, pockmarked only almost imperceptible roads and cities. It almost reminded him of… home.

Chief was awakened from his rare moment of introspection by a comment from Cortana. "Prepare for impact, Chief!" she said. "Hitting the ground in ten! Nine! Eight!"

Chief gritted his teeth, his hand tightening around the pod's hatch handles. He braced for the jarring crunch that he knew was coming.

"Five! Four! Get ready!"

The ground was getting closer… and closer… Chief felt his pods' chutes pop.

THUD.

Chief, consummate soldier that he was, automatically timed his jump out of his pod to come directly after the pod's door ejected outward, blowing off like a champaign cork. He'd never had champaign before.

Chief jumped out onto the ground quickly, sizing up his surroundings with deft efficiency. He was in an open country field, the grass tall, and the other pods were thudding into the ground nearby. Rifle pointing ahead, he glanced around. Secure. The area was secure.

He relaxed just a little, nonchalantly watching as the other pods made craters in the land roughly around him. In the distance was the great walled city he had seen. It was made of tan stone, and its walls towered up as high as a modest skyscraper.

"Ready for a field trip?" said Cortana.

Chief nodded. He grabbed a magnum that he had stored next to him in the pod. "Sounds good."