AN. This is a side project to my main story, The Columbian Wasteland. If this gets enough of a reception, I will post more of the story. A full disclaimer: I own neither Halo nor Pokemon. Also, I'm not especially familiar with the Halo story, and have been using research via Halo-Nation. If I got something wrong, please point it out in a civil manner such that it may be corrected. With that said...

The year is 2552, the date July 24. The location, the Planet Reach, stronghold of humanity and the home of the Spartan program that produced the heroes of humanity, the Spartan-II's and Spartan-III's. But we're not here to follow Noble Team or to tag along with the Master Chief in his exploits. No, this story is a grass roots story, a tale of common Marines and Sailors and of a discovery that will change the course of the war, and it all began with a hurried jump to slipspace. A converted Phoenix class colony ship, Death of Tyranny hovered around Reach, going through resupply.

The war had been hard on the ship. She hadn't exactly been in her first flush of youth when she was converted for the war effort and many of the parts used in the conversion were second hand from other ships. Most of her weapons badly needed to be fully repaired, her MAC cannon would typically only fire six shots before it overheated and had to be repaired, her slipspace drive was temperamental at best and often had to be turned on and off a few times before it would work, and the reactor had to have parts scavenged off of wrecked spaceships applied to keep functioning. In short, it was a miracle that the ship was even functioning, a feat accomplished through the ingenuity of the long beleaguered engineering department.

The less said about the crew, the better. While some of the crew was up to snuff, the majority of the crew were Marines and Sailors who had disgraced themselves with one or more offenses. In other cases, these were the one's who didn't meet the physical requirements, were psychologically unstable, or were otherwise unfit for military service. To be sent to the Death of Tyranny was a punishment bordering on a death sentence. There had been some talk of using these men and women for some Project, but even for the UNSC, it was deemed too cruel and more importantly a waste of resources. At least by sending them to this ship they could get some use out of the chaff.

Some confused it for being subterfuge at first, to fool the Covenant into thinking that the ship was a piece of junk, that she had some serious fire power or speed (akin to the Q-ships from WWI and WWII of the pre-Cyber Age). But, when they actually looked closer at the ship, they realized that she was indeed a flying piece of junk. She badly needed a refit, a long time in the repair yards to get her fully war ready, but the UNSC needed every ship and every person it could send out to fight, even if they were barely functioning pieces of junk like the Death of Tyranny.


Captain Elcid Barrett scowled throughout the whole process. He knew that his ship was a piece of crap, and wondered just who he had pissed off in the chain of command to get stuck here. Perhaps it was because of his negative opinions on some of the less than ethical things that were being done in the name of victory against the Covenant. Maybe such measures were necessary in a war of survival, he would concede that, but these sorts of ethical concessions had been going on for generations. Back when he had been a fresh faced Ensign, just out of the Academy, he had been stationed on several planets that the UNSC had recently taken from the Insurrectionists. The hatred shown to him and his fellow sailors and marines shook his conceptions of right and wrong to their very core.

He had objected to many of the things that had been done, like everything that the ONI did, up to and including the SPARTAN's. At his age, he should have been an Admiral, but his opinions on the war had kept him held back, with the only thing preventing him from being discharged being the desperate need in the UNSC for experienced officers in frontline service.

They had sent him to the Death of Tyranny to die. Well screw them, he'd make this ship a capable warship and transport again. Even if it seemed to be constantly falling apart around him.

AN. Thoughts? Opinions? Did any of you catch the references here?

Edit: In case anyone was wondering, I was referring to Red vs Blue and Stan Rogers' Barrett's Privateers.