At the forest hideout, Dr. Grey is busy tending to Carolina's leg as Zone stands next to them. 

"How bad is it?" Zone asks. 

"Well, fortunately, he missed her femoral artery." Dr. Grey points out. 

"That's good." Carolina says in relief. 

"No sweetie, you had a knife inside of you. That's the opposite of good." 

"Call me "sweetie" again, and there'll be a knife inside of you." Carolina threatens calmly. 

"Oooooh, you're hostile! I'd love to psychoanalyze you." 

"Grey! The leg, please!" Zone says getting annoyed. 

"Oh, yes. Be sure not to put any unnatural strain on those muscles. If you reopen the wound, it won't be pretty." 

Epsilon appears next to Carolina. "Great. Hey, way to go, Carolina. Taken out by an over-sized steak knife." 

"Well maybe if someone had remembered to account for hidden blades..." 

"Hey, Epsilon and I are AIs, not a babysitters." Xi cut in. "And plus to be honest, if we did wind up being babysitters, we wouldn't get paid enough to watch the two of you." 

"Ain't that the truth." Epsilon chuckled as he and Xi fist-bumped. 

Dr. Grey stands up behind them. "Sooooooooo, here's the tiny ghost people here. Anyone care to introduce me?" 

"Oh that's Church. Yeah, he had to leave for a while but I knew he would come back." Caboose cried. 

"Bullcrap, you were totally depressed." Tucker scoffs. 

"Pssh, ah what?! No! No, Tucker! You're not remembering that right! No, I would not do something like that. I would not spiral downward into an emotional state of depression and try to fill the remains with a giant, mechanical, robot pet just because I missed Church! Stupid Tucker." 

"Oh forget you, I wanna analyze him." Grey says piqued by Caboose's statement. 

"Dr. Grey, this is Agent Carolina. She, Zone, and I were operatives for Project Freelancer. As for Church, he's an artificial intelligence fragment from the same organization. Codename: Epsilon. Xi as well. And to make a long story short, Epsilon kind of used to be leader of blue team before I showed up." Wash explained. 

"And tried to murder us." Epsilon added. 

"That was a misunderstanding." Wash protests. 

"I know, I'm just sayin', don't gloss over the good parts." 

"At least he didn't abandon us." Tucker says folding his arms. 

"Psychoanalyses for everyone!" Grey cried. 

"How can you be so infinitely positive?" Zone asks. 

"Oh boy, can I go first? I have got a lot of things crammed inside me!" Donut replies before Sarge covered his mouth. 

"Now hold up just a second! I wanna know what in the name of Benedict Arnold Palmer is going on around here! We've been tricked, we've been backstabbed and we've been quite possibly, bamboozled." Sarge states. 

"Yeah, and whenever that crap starts happening, it typically means you Freelancers had something to do with it." Grif adds. 

"Project Freelancer is gone. We all saw to that." Carolina reminds them. 

"'Colorful Space Marines Stop Corruption.'" Grey says. "That was the news article Locus brought General Doyle when he suggested we find you. I always thought the title was meant to describe your appearances, but, now I think I get what the writer was going for." 

"What I'm saying is that Project Freelancer isn't behind any of this. This is, something else." 

"Hmm, the plot thickens." Tucker muttered. 

"Look, man, after we crashed, Carolina picked up a transmission. A couple of morons were talking about selling cloaking equipment to another couple of morons. There was no way we were gonna let that slide. So, she decided to leave, I decided to go with her! Figured you guys would be fine, OK?" Epsilon explained. 

"Oh, yeah, totally." Tucker laughs sourly. "We were totally fine, just doing our thing ,hanging out, drinking margaritas, getting captured by Zone's old army buddies that turned out to be evil mercenaries. Grreat time!" 

"Ohh, man, Tucker, I am so sorr-, I mean it, my sincerest apologies, I had no idea that you had turned into such a whiny baby while I was gone." Epsilon scowls. 

Tucker shoots Epsilon, but the bullet passes through his projection. He then reappears in front of him. "And you still haven't grasped the concept of a hologram. Man, you're just having a really tough time today, aren't you, buddy?" Epsilon chuckled as Xi snickered a bit too. 

"Man, and I thought we had issues." Simmons breathed. 

"Heh, this is better than any daytime television drama. And that's some quality programming." Sarge chuckles. 

"Maybe Church will turn out to be someone's long-lost brother." Donut adds. 

"I think we've had enough plot twists for one lifetime." Grif sighs. 

"And his real name is Horatio!" 

"I'd watch it." Sarge agrees. 

"Alright enough." Zone says stepping between Tucker and Church. "Tucker, there's no way they could have known all of this would happen. Right now we need to focus on the bigger issues at hand. Even if Epsilon is being pain in the neck." 

"Oh, don't you start too." Epsilon hissed. 

"We started investigating. And it didn't take long for us to realise that something was very wrong with this planet. Abandoned cities, Soldiers everywhere. We kept to the shadows and gathered as much intel as we could, and what we found was worse than I had anticipated." Carolina say fearfully. 

"How so?" Wash asks. 

"This third faction on Chorus, these space pirates, have managed to acquire Freelancer equipment and are manufacturing more advanced versions of it on a mass scale. Versions that don't require the assistance of an AI." 

"But how is that possible?" Simmons inquired. "I thought the UNSC confiscated everything Project Freelancer ever created." 

"They did, but then they put those creations on a ship, and that ship crashed here." Carolina says pointing at the ground. 

"Wait, what?" Tucker says stunned. 

"Why wou-OOHH for the love of-well that's just perfect! Freaking perfect!" Zone shouted. 

"Exactly. Guys, don't you think it's a little weird that our transport vessel also happen to be carrying tons of weapons and vehicles, and that it just so happened to magically crash on a planet in need of those kind of things." Epsilon cried. 

"What exactly are you suggesting?" Wash asks. 

"Someone wanted our ship to crash." Carolina states bluntly. The Reds and Blues' eyes all widen in shock. 

"Soooo, what your saying is, there's no way any of us could be responsible for the crash." Simmons ascertains. 

Carolina is taken aback. "I...well...yes. Why do you ask?" 

(FLASHBACK) 

Simmons is exiting maintenance as an Operator comes up to him. 

"Sir, this area is reserved for authorized personnel only. What were you doing in there?" 

"Oh! Sorry, I just noticed you guys were using a really outdated web browser. I went ahead and updated it for you. Now it's the one NASA uses! Heh, no need to thank me." Simmons says pridefully. 

"Those are the ship's navigation systems! You can't just update that stuff!" The Operator cried. 

"Tell me about it! Once I started with the browser, I couldn't stop myself from changing the graphics card too!" 

"You WHAT?!" 

"And the motherboard. And the fan. And- oh hey, by the way! Uh, I'm glad you're here. How do you feel about acrylic window panels?" 

"I..." 

"The answer is, you love 'em." Simmons finishes before the ship's alarms go off. 

(FLASHBACK OVER) 

"No reason!" Wash, Tucker, Simmons, Grif, and Sarge say. 

Epsilon reappears next to Carolina and Zone.

"Uh, you guys are missing the point! Someone managed to ensure that Freelancer equipment made it right here; to this tiny rock in the middle of space. These guys aren't just some-just some asshole raiders and mercenaries; they're organized, and they've managed to work their way into our own forces!" 

"In short, we have no idea who we can trust until we find the people behind all of this." Carolina finishes. 

"Okay, hold up, aren't we all forgetting something here?" Tucker says. 

"Ah! Yesterday was Mother's Day." Caboose states. 

"There are two armies that are ready to blow each other's brains out thanks to Locus and Felix. We gotta tell them they're being used." 

"Tucker, at this point, telling them won't be easy." Zone points out. 

"What do you mean? We've got those teleporter cubes. That's how we got here right? Let's just zap ourselves over to the New Republic." 

"Tucker, we've only got a few of those things left, they're kinda tricky to use, they put an enormous strain on the physical body, which, by the way, all of you have. That's not even the main problem though." Xi exclaims. 

"Those two mercenaries are thorough. They've got some sort of radio jammer set up that only allow broadcasting on certain frequencies, and they monitor all other open channels. We tried to contact you when we overheard your radio transmission to Donut from the crash site. Not only did we fail, but Locus managed to trace the call back to this hideout. We were lucky he missed us and I doubt we'll have luck on our side again." 

"Yeah, and if they've gone through all this trouble to keep their radios quiet, I can guarantee you they're not gonna let you guys within a mile of Doyle or Kimball. If they're not already by their side, then their cloaked space buddies definitely are." Epsilon states. 

"We need more intel. We need the upper hand on these guys before we can even think about taking them on again. And to make matters worse, we don't have much time." Carolina breathes. 

"What makes you say that?" Sarge asks. 

"We've managed to eavesdrop on a few conversations between the mercenaries and someone calling themselves "Control." They've got plans and protocols for just about everything. And I'm willing to bet they've got one for this." 

"Meaning?" Tucker inquires. 

Epsilon appears in front of Tucker. "Look at it this way: ten people, two robots, and two AI on this planet know what's really going on, and until this group is tracked down and killed, I'm talking about you guys, by the way, there's really only one thing these space pirates can do; And that's to finish what they started. Oh and let's not forget how you mentioned before that these mercenaries also are Zone's or should I say Raptor's former Spartan friends." 

Everyone including Xi turns to Zone who looks down and sighs. "I trusted them. I FOUGHT alongside them. They were my friends. But now that Victor's gone and I have all of you, I swear right here and now: that I won't betray nor fail to protect any of you. I want that clear." 

The Reds and Blues smile at Zone's comment, knowing that he'll never abandon them.