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Author's Note: What I originally had this story as seemed like it was a good idea to me at the time, but with new canon coming out in Halo I would have had to completely overhaul a decent amount of the story. So instead I have decided to scrap what was in my opinion, a bit of a corny story with a bit of a Mary Sue protagonist, and instead take this another direction. I still like my base ideas, and some of the technology will stay the same. To those who used to read this I believe that this will be a major upgrade compared to what I used to have. To all new readers, enjoy!
Anti-Aircraft fire lanced up from the ground, the fuel rod explosions sometimes coming close enough to shake the Pelican. Our shields could take the hits, but the didn't mean that grunts like us enjoyed the nasty vibrations shaking us to our core, especially on the odd occasion we took a direct shot. We were deploying on UNSC Outpost X9473C, colloquially known as Verdant. It was no more than a small, newly terraformed world with only two civilian cities, but due to its status as a major leap towards civilian integration between original Covenant and Human civilians Verdant was a primary target for Covenant forces. Just about every race had a strong military presence on the planet except for the Jiralhanee, as they didn't really have any true interest in civilian life.
Xenophobia was still highly common among humans, and many incidents happened between the civilians, hence the strong military presence by all races. We had for the longest time assumed aliens existed, and there were always those who still believed that aliens existed before we met the covenant, but after so many years without any sign of intelligent life most humans figured we were alone in the universe. That belief was shattered when Kig-Yar pirates first encountered, and plundered a human transport. After several mysterious disappearances centered around Harvest humanity sent a couple of hardened veterans to train a militia an fix the problem. When they encountered hostile aliens things quickly went south. Some of Harvest still won't produce the crops it was originally famous for due to the glassing from that first contact. A short war happened around harvest before humanity was given the "opportunity" to join the Covenant. Between that choice and a prolonged war of annihilation what real choice did we have?
The benefits though were staggering. The covenant was much more highly advanced than we were. And if that weren't enough for our scientists to study, we learned about the Forerunners, the previous "Gods" of the universe. Even having been around for a long time, Humanity still hadn't managed to figure out that just about all of our planets had hidden Forerunner caches of technology. There was a massive boom of scientists graduating from colleges even now, and probably will be way into the future. Everything, and I mean everything, was impacted by the advent of Forerunner technology. At first we kept all of our findings to ourselves as there was still some resentment from the brief war that originally occourred. But we were slowly learning to trust the Covenant, and they were slowly learning to trust us.
That all changed with Halo. Sure there were other times we had encountered the Flood, in 2531 a mix of forces between the Arbiter, prophet of Regret, and the Spirit of Fire managed to stumble upon a forerunner world with a massive fleet of ships, but also a Flood presence. While it never was able to be wiped out completely, and there were still not so mysterious disappearances of members from both the scientists and military personnel it was no more than just the boogeyman in the night. But finding the second Halo, Installation 05, in 2552 changed everything. Finding a Gravemind changed everything. It proved the Flood was more than just some virus, some stellar disease. Instead it was a parasite that threatened the entire galaxy. Humanity argued for the destruction of the entire ring, as did the Sangheili as it was their troops who were fed into the meatgrinder trying to keep the Flood in check. The prophets though refused to do such a thing, and denounced anyone who would say such things as heretics, going as far as to execute those who said so.
The Sangheili, ever the ones to defend their honor, were horrified of the blood spilled and saw this as a betrayal by the Prophets. Humanity on the other hand took matters into their own hands when ONI nuked it to hell and back. Both races were immediately set for extermination by that point. Sure there were some Kig-Yar, Unggoy, and Lekgolo who fought beside us, but their numbers were entirely limited. Even one clan of Jiralhanee led by a Chieftain said to be more cunning than any other switched sides.
"Corporal get your head out of your ass and get ready!" my Sergeant yelled, practically in my face. I had a habit of thinking too much before a fight, and could get distracted easily. Apparently he had already called for us to gear up, but I was so lost in my thoughts I hadn't heard it.
"Yes sir!" I responded back immediately, getting ready as quickly as possible. We were going to hit the ground running, this deployment was supposed to be hot.