“There it is again,” Adequate said, pointing as a mass darker than the surrounding maelstrom swept past. “Something is out there. In the storm.”
	“There are more than six hundred known substances circulating in the winds of the vortex,” the artificial intelligence responded. “You could have seen any one of them.”
	“I have been here for fifteen years, ancilla. I know what is outside.” He really didn’t, not with any specificity. “Whatever that object was, it was not dust. It was solid and dark—mostly.” He frowned. “You are controlling my combat skin. The armor’s sensors must have seen the same thing I did, correct?”
	“If the sensors noticed anything, nothing exceeded parameters enough for the systems to issue an alert. But there is a simple way to find out. I am rerunning the imagery now. Tell me when you see it.”
	Adequate stood still as a statue and closed his eyes as the ancilla, through the symbiotic mental interface in his armor, replayed the seconds in question. Since the images were being piped directly into the theater of his mind, shutting his eyes was unnecessary— in theory. In practice, since receiving his first Warrior-Servant combat skin as a young Manipular, he had never been very good at shutting out the outside world.
	The ancilla did its job, and the moment reappeared to him, as clear as any memory he ever had. “There,” he said, when an amorphous form peeked out from the clouds.
	“Evaluating.” The image froze, and Adequate saw symbols dancing alongside the dark blob, the result of his ancilla’s studies. “Spectroscopic analysis is unrevealing—but the strongest possibilities are all Class-D ices, which accrete in the upper elevations of the atmosphere near here and get swept into the storm.”
	Adequate’s brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate on the image. “What is that in the center? It seems to be”—he tried to focus—“It almost appears to be a light.”
	“There is intense electrical activity below us, Adequate. Anything that drifts into the cyclone is bound to be struck by lightning.” The ancilla paused. “Does that resolve the matter?”
	“I suppose,” he replied. “That is all.”

Halo: Fractures - Defender of the Storm