Editing Marathon (section)

==Marathon 2: Durandal, or How an Insane AI and his Pet Battleroid were Treasure Hunting==

The Security Officer suddenly wakes up in the middle of the war on the alien planet. After initial fighting against the Pfhor garrison, Durandal explains to him that, in the last seconds of the previous game, he decided to kidnap the Security Officer and put him into stasis. Three months later, a large Pfhor fleet arrived in Tau Ceti and burned the colony down, and the last thing that was heard of Leela was that she was disassambled and transferred to the Pfhor homeword. Seventeen years have passed since then, and the UESC and the Pfhor Empire are at war. But right now Durandal doesn't care about that, because during the last seventeen years he was exploring the galaxy on the hijacked Pfhor ship (which he rechristened "Boomer"), looking for Lh'owon, the S'pht homeworld. They are now on it, along with the free S'pht and humans that were captured by Pfhor last game and put into stasis. And thus Durandal orders the Security Officer to look for clues about the S'pht'Kr, the free clan that according to legend will save all the S'pht in the Empire from slavery. Durandal is more interested in other parts of the legend, namely that the S'pht were the servants of Yrro (a name that should sound oddly familiar), who settled on this planet after achieving a pyrrhic victory against their enemies (whom they shot into the sun to burn) and possessed technology that could warp entire planets through dimensions. Durandal wants to use these reality warping technologies so that he can survive the end of the universe.

They did find the clues, but they were out of time, for the best fleet in Pfhor Empire warped in the system, commanded by Admiral Tfear and advised by the resurrected and now very psychotic Tycho. With only one corvette, Durandal took down half of the fleet before being forced to crash land on one of Lh'owon's moons. Not wishing to end up like Leela, he orders the Security Officer to destroy him. He does so, and is soon captured.

The Security Officer spent a month in prison, before being busted out by the surviving humans. Led by the "civilian leader" named Robert Blake (aka "BOB Bob Blake"), they were holed in the bunker with powerful defenses that prevented the Pfhor from killing them. While they are glad that Durandal is dead, they also want to get out of the planet alive, so they follow Durandal's final instructions to re-activate an ancient S'pht AI whom Durandal codenamed Thoth, after the Egyptian god of wisdom. They do so with the help of Security Officer and awaken the balance-obsessed Thoth, who helps (in the very roundabout way, for he speaks in vague riddles about, among other things, eternally reincarnating heroes) the outnumbered humans to summon the S'pht'Kr clan, who arrive on the warp-capable moon. Led by the oldest of S'pht, Sbhuth, they start wrecking Pfhors' shit.

During the chaos, it turns out Durandal was alive, just confined in most secure data-prison in existence on-board the Pfhor flagship. He neglects to explain how he got out of that one, but in doing so he got in control of the flagship, assisting the S'pht'Kr in routing the Pfhor fleet and blasting Tycho's own private ship out of the sky. Then, using the ship's lasers carved a giant "Fatum Iustum Stultorum" on the moon where it crashed, which is a fancy way of saying [[Lulz|"You Suck"]]. During this, the surviving humans hijacked a Pfhor fuel ship, and not wishing to deal with Durandal again, warped out of the system, abandoning the Security Officer.

As a final salt on the wound Durandal sent the Security Officer to annihilate the surviving Heavy Armor division by himself, possibly for shits and giggles, after which what was left of the Pfhor fleet said "Fuck this." and per standard procedure in case of failed invasions/suppression launched the Trih Xeem at the System Sun, a Yrro weapon which roughly translates as "Early Nova". As the name implies, the sun soon goes supernova, and everybody gets the hell out of dodge.

The Epilogue rolls in, giving details on the Human-Pfhor war that lasted fifty years, largely thanks to Tycho AI clones dragging it out. The Pfhor transport that Leela was on never reached the Pfhor homeworld, for it was intercepted by Nar pirates (a race only brought up in the epilogue) and its contents sold to another epilogue-race known as the Vylae, where Leela became Rampant and took over their fifteen-planet FTL network. The Vyale were unable to get her out and were resigned to have her around. The humans under Robert Blake's command reached the UESC, and they were all that were left of the Marathon and Tau Ceti missions. And ten-thousand years later, Durandal showed up in the solar system in the shiny new Jjaro dreadnought, warped directly into Earth's atmosphere just to say hi, and warped out, bypassing all the not-so-impressive-now system wide defenses in matter of seconds.