I love the Halo universe. It has a spectacular story that is complemented by incredible novels. But I find that it has one thing lacking: a movie, or two, or more, even, based around the story told in the games and books. This particular fanfic, along with its sequels, is my attempt to reconcile that fact. It won't be portrayed in a script format, but it is one possible way that a movie based on Halo could be like. I am in no way affiliated with Bungie, 343i or Microsoft, so this is just one version of events that is my own, not theirs. I will attempt to stick as close to their canon as possible, but certain liberties will be taken in order to fix some canonical errors or for the sake of better storytelling. I hope you have as much fun reading this story as I had writing it. Thank you, and enjoy!
February 22, 2511
Theryn Desert, Mamore
The night was a calm one, with a cloudless sky that let the sole moon of Mamore, Emoris, shine to its absolute fullest, setting the otherwise bleak desert awash in a pale radiance. It was also a quiet night, with an absence of wind. The only sound to break the stillness of the picturesque desert scene was the drone of the engines of three D77-TC Pelican dropships flying in a straight line towards a former UNSC outpost in the middle of the desert. They flew high enough to bypass the craggy mesas strewn throughout the sands, with the only wavering in their flight course due to turbulence in the air. Inside the Pelican at the head of the 'convoy' was Corporal Avery Junior Johnson, a tough 27-year-old man with dark skin who, at that moment, felt nothing but apprehension. When he had enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2502, he had volunteered to be part of a program designed to help enhance the combat capabilities of soldiers. Dubbed the ORION Project, it had turned out to be a success: every mission the UNSC had thrown at rebels or terrorists ended in the former's favor if it was spearheaded by ORION candidates. However, the battles had taken their toll; by 2506, less than half of the three hundred ORION soldiers were still alive. Now, Johnson and twenty-nine of his former ORION comrades had been ordered to take back a UNSC compound that had recently fallen into the hands of members of the "Freedom and Liberation Party", and he couldn't feel more nervous. He started humming the tune to his favorite flip music song Shreddin', which caused the soldiers sitting next to him to chuckle and join in. They would have undoubtedly been singing the song had the parameters of the mission not called for nearly complete silence. As the Pelicans neared their destination, the woman in charge of the mission, Lieutenant Anya Fergusson, an ORION since 2493, stood up and stared at the soldiers under her command.
"Listen up, troops," she said, her voice barely louder than normal. "Facility Kilo X-Ray Sixteen is two minutes away. As you all know, the operation beacon at this deserted storage facility was raised unexpectedly four days ago. The regional CENTCOM sent a drone in to investigate, and it was determined that a rebel force has set up that facility as a makeshift nuclear missile launch range, with at least two FENRIS warheads possibly ready to launch. Our job is to neutralize the Innies and disarm those missiles, and then bring the payloads back to CENTCOM. Any questions?" The silence that answered her was enough for her to smile and load a fresh clip into her M6E handgun. "Then let's do this."
The Pelicans dropped below a mesa, and ten soldiers got out of each one. Johnson, his MA5 assault rifle in tow, walked up to Private James Lee, a twenty-one year old with a knack for troublemaking. Lee smiled at Johnson as the latter walked up to him. "Hey, Aves!" he whispered, using a nickname Johnson hated. "I bet I can take out more Innies than you!" Johnson sighed, and then smacked Lee upside the head. Even though he received glares from Fergusson and other soldiers, he still told Lee, "in your dreams, Jimmy." Fergusson took a moment to shake her head. She motioned for two ORIONs to climb the mesa and take up sniping positions. They both started clambering up the rocky edge, but it was less steep towards the top and they got there with relative ease.
"LT, we've got three guards up on a catwalk," Corporal Andy Norren said. "Both warheads are there, towards the vehicle depot of the compound." Fergusson led Lee, Johnson and the other soldiers to the edge of the mesa. They were just over half a mile away from the compound, which was composed of only a handful of large buildings and a few smaller ones. The two warheads were easy to locate, as they were both over eight feet tall and in an area heavily illuminated by strobe lights. A quick look upwards revealed two guards, silhouetted against the full moon, standing on a catwalk connecting the second floors of two of the larger buildings. They were conversing as a third one stood nearby, sipping a drink. Lieutenant Fergusson led her team closer to the compound, using the darkness as cover. Johnson noticed that they weren't taking the dusty main road, but were instead using the sand to mask their footsteps. He was just about to ask Fergusson about the danger of landmines when he heard a blaring noise. Looking about forty feet to his right, just next to the road he saw a red pinprick of light. It was a proximity detector, which was a safer option than a landmine for both parties involved, but a dastardly defense nonetheless.
The ORIONs rushed towards the compound, but the guards didn't fire at them. They had had high-velocity rounds put in their skulls by the duo of snipers. As the soldiers moved closer towards the warheads, Johnson saw a bright light come from a window of one of the smaller buildings to his left, and Lieutenant Fergusson fell down with a cry of pain and a trio of bullets fired from a battle rifle lodged inside her neck. Lee took cover behind a shoddy grey building and fired at the hostile, along with a half-dozen other soldiers. Johnson watched as an M12-LRV Warthog burst from within the vehicle depot near where the warheads were, with a man driving it, another manning the turret of the vehicle, and a woman with a rocket launcher aimed at the soldiers. Johnson unclipped a grenade from his belt and threw it towards the undercarriage of the vehicle, which exploded shortly after the vehicle crossed over it, sending the Hog tumbling towards more ORIONs. They unloaded bullets from multiple different guns at the passengers, killing the man and woman up front, but the man on the turret fired, killing two more troops before a sniper round took his head off. Johnson and a handful of soldiers weaved in between the buildings, trying to evade getting hit by bullets streaming from the upper floors of buildings and from Insurrectionists on the ground. He fired at one man, hitting him in the arm, and an ORION named Carl Ziegler finished him off with a shot from his battle rifle to the man's chest. "We're in a tight spot, Avery," he said as he reloaded. Indeed, they were wedged between two drab structures with Insurrectionists firing at them from above. "I'm going to make a break for the warheads and try to disarm them. Cover me." Johnson barely had time to nod before Ziegler ran from their hiding space, firing at a group of rebels hiding behind a nearby barricade. As he and Johnson sprinted the thirty meters towards the place where the missiles were, he fell down onto his knees, blood streaming from a wound in his back, and Johnson turned around to see an Insurrectionist with a magnum not three meters away turning his gun to face him. Johnson kicked the gun out of his grasp, and punched him in the face, causing him to crumple to the ground, clutching a broken nose. Johnson ignored the wounded rebel and continued making his way to the missiles, dodging bullets as he did so. Once he got to them, he knelt down in front of one and quickly removed the paneling covering up where the some of the payload would be. He turned around to see a rebel get shot by a shotgun wielded by a fellow ORION, but other than that there were no allies or enemies near him. Johnson turned his attention back to defusing the payload…except there wasn't a payload. He peered inside the missile to see nothing but empty space.
"It must be the darkness,' he muttered, but when he stuck his finger into the hole, his fears came into fruition. The missile was mostly empty, which meant someone had removed the explosive payload. "No, no, no. Dammit, this isn't happening!" he cried with bitter angst. A bullet flew past his head, hitting the metal shell of the missile and coming close to ricocheting into Johnson's eye. Johnson got up and ran behind the missile, using this cover to open a comm channel to the one of the pilots. "Fracas! The nukes are hollow, I repeat, the nukes are hollow! The Innie bastards must've taken the payload somewhere else!" Soon after he screamed that into his comm, he got a reply from the pilot whose callsign was Fracas.
"Those dirty rotten no-good sons and daughters of…did you get 'em all, corporal?"
Johnson listened, and he could still hear the sounds of gunfire amongst the structures. "Negative, sir. It's hot down here." A resounding explosion occurred just as he finished, and he watched as a powerful Scorpion tank painted in garish grey-and-red hues rolled out from the vehicle depot, obliterating another building. "They've got a tank! Do not pick us up, Fracas!" Johnson crouched down behind the hollow missile and prayed that no more people would have to die that day. He heard a whine, followed by an explosion, and then a much louder explosion, followed by a cry of agony. He crouched there until he heard multiple cries of victory, at which point he warily stood up and looked to where the tank had been. Standing atop it was an ORION soldier. Two rebels lay wounded at the feet of three more. Johnson, sweating profusely under his marine BDU, walked steadily towards the soldiers. He looked at a structure across from the vehicle depot where another rebel prisoner was being escorted towards the main group, with Lee happily sticking the barrel of his gun in between her shoulder blades. As he walked past Johnson, he smirked and mouthed the word 'three'. The older man glared at him and replied, in a soft yet commanding tone, "killing human beings isn't something you should be proud about, Lee." The lighter-skinned young man shrugged, and forced his prisoner into a kneeling position next to her captured brothers-in-arms. A fourth prisoner was carried towards the others while being supported by two ORIONs, who haphazardly dumped him on the ground. The man groaned softly, and his battered grey helmet fell off his head. Johnson recognized him as the man who he had dispatched and broken the nose of earlier. He counted the ORIONs gathered around the circle in his head. There were twenty-one of them. Discounting the snipers up on the mesa, that meant seven soldiers had died. They had taken out forty-eight rebels in less than thirty minutes.
Corporal Norren and his fellow sniper Katie Evans had embarked on Fracas's Pelican shortly after it began to hover the kilometer to the extraction point. When they arrived, they were met by noticeably fewer faces then they had set out with, and nearly all those faces were grim. The ORIONs silently got onto the Pelicans, and the prisoners were kept under careful watch. The bodies of the servicemen and servicewomen killed were brought aboard one of the Pelicans as well, to be given a full military burial later on. The last soldier who got onto the final Pelican to depart was Avery Johnson. He had ran off towards the missiles and fiddled around with them, and when he got onto the Pelican, he took an M4 Field Disk out of his helmet and handed it to Norren, who slipped it inside his own helmet. Norren saw a few seconds of Johnson prying open some paneling on one of the warheads, only to reveal an empty inside. A quick look on Johnson's part to the other missile revealed the same thing. "My God…" Norren said as he handed the chip back to Johnson. "Where did they…how did they…"
"No idea, Andy," Avery replied solemnly. "They obviously had very skilled technicians, but I don't know where they took the payload to." He sighed and gripped the sides of his head in anger. "Those damn prisoners had better tell us everything we need to know." The soldiers were silent. They had lost friends, and they were tired and angry. Evans checked her TACPAD to see the time. It was 12:15 on the morning of February 23 when Pelican Bravo 009 docked with the UNSC frigate Eidolon. As Evans took off her helmet and ran a hand through her curly red hair, she looked out the window at the back of the transport and became one of the few people to see the explosion that would forever change human history.
The city of Haven was one with intrepid nightlife. Gamblers, thieves and even worse degenerate scum came out to frolic at night. But even as Emoris shined upon the city, letting its pale light fall upon the towering tesseract-shaped residential apartment home to over four million of the city's inhabitants-nearly half of its population-the city was unusually active. People were talking, eating and having a carefree time even after midnight. Most people in the Haven Arcology, however, were sleeping, but it was still no surprise to the janitor when a blatantly drunk young couple walked in, laughing, and swiped a keycard to get inside one of the twenty-five elevators. The man, the janitor noted, had a large duffle bag looped over one shoulder, but he saw nothing odd about that. The janitor, due to having worked the last two hours straight, decided that he, too, should go and get some rest. It was 12:02, anyways, and he was only supposed to work until midnight. As such, he put away his cleaning supplies in the main janitorial supply closet and put his olive green coat on. As he strode across the empty lobby and out of the building, he took a moment to marvel at it. It was six hundred stories tall, the fifth-tallest building in the city. The building was divided into two sections: there was a hollowed-out cube on the outside and, inside, suspended by eight supporting walkways from various angles, was the second half, a 150 by 150 story cube, which hung above a grand park, with various native plants and even a small lake. The janitor sighed; he was somewhat disappointed that he didn't live in such a beautiful structure. Still, the cost to own an apartment there was outrageous. He walked over to his sleek white car, started it up, and drove away, eager to reunite with his wife and children at his house. He was a few blocks away from the arcology when he heard a massive explosion. The shockwave caused a hundred-story office building next to the arcology to crumble, with some of the debris falling down only feet behind his ruined car. He was shocked and scared, with his car on its side by a streetlight. He heard people screaming, and, crawling out of the wreckage of his car, saw a massive dust cloud spreading out from the building he had been at only a quarter of an hour before. "What's going on?" he croaked. No one heard him. People were busy fleeing in a mass exodus away from the arcology. Already, the piercing wail of police and fire department vehicles could be heard over the cacophony of people yelling. Thick smoke made the night darker, and fires raged unchecked for a block surrounding the ruined husk of the Haven Arcology.
Fifteen minutes earlier, a man and a woman walked into their apartment on the seventh floor inside the inner building of the arcology. The man took a duffle bag off his shoulder and put it on the linen bed sheets, while the woman pulled a chip out of her purse. Together, they took a jumbled mass of wires and blocks of metal out of the bag, and began plugging certain wires into an outlet in the room, along with more wires into the blocks of metal in different stages of assembly. They worked carefully, showing that they were not amateurs and had practiced doing exactly this setup multiple times before. Both participants were busy flipping switches and turning on various buttons, until finally they had a flashing, beeping mess that looked vaguely like someone had taken the inside of a missile out and put it back together without the metal casing. In actuality, that was exactly what had occurred. The woman slipped outside the door and knocked four times on the apartment adjacent to the one with the missile in it. A heavyset man with a thin beard opened the door and asked, "Did you finish construction?" The woman nodded, at which point the man slipped a few gears and screws into her outstretched hand, and, while she went back into her own room, lugged a conical device into her room. The other man looked at it and gulped. "I guess this is it, huh?"
The woman nodded, and kissed the bearded man on the cheek, and then the younger man on the lips. "Dad," she said to the bearded one, "please let us have our final moments together." The heavyset man nodded, as his daughter and her boyfriend walked out the door. He connected a few wires into the cone, and finally input the chip his daughter had kept inside her purse into it. On one of the flashing metal pieces, red numbers showed up on a screen: a three, then a two, followed by a one. Each number had a barely audible beep accompany it. When a zero appeared on the screen, the explosion occurred.
The lower halves of both sections of the arcology were reduced to ashes. A crater appeared in the ground stretching half a kilometer deep. Two buildings next to the arcology toppled to the ground due to the shockwaves, though neither was as tall or impressive as it. Cars on the streets near it were either obliterated or thrown into other buildings. Due to the fact that most bodies were completely disintegrated in the explosion, the death toll would never be figured out. The police estimated it at around two million fatalities, and, due to the shockwave, fires, debris and power outages that sprouted throughout the city, over four million people were hurt, though around two million of them were only slightly injured. It would remain the worst loss of life recorded in human history for only fourteen years.
March 7, 2511
New York City, Earth
The United Nations Space Command Supreme Headquarters, also known as UNSC High Command Facility Alpha-1, was an impressing structure. It was a solid grey, with a massive skylight taking up the entirety of the ceiling. It was well over forty stories tall, but it was much longer than it was tall. Avery Johnson gulped as he stepped out of his red car, staring at the enormity of the building. It was only a short walk from the parking lot towards the main entrance, but the army soldiers standing at the exit of the lot obviously thought he needed an escort. One of them walked up to him. "Corporal Avery J. Johnson, serial number 48789-20114-AJ?" he asked. Johnson, dressed in a business suit he normally reserved for weddings or funerals, responded with a simple, "That's me." The army trooper handed him a lanyard with Johnson's own name, face and rank on it. "Keep that on at all times," he ordered. He led Johnson across the street and through the large glass doors leading into the facility, with two more troops following behind them. Inside, there was a short hallway leading to a massive atrium, with hundreds of busy workers at desks. There was a monument towards the back of the room, with stairwells leading up to multiple levels. Johnson was too far away to see who the monument honored, but he was lead up a stairwell to a set of elevators. "They want you down there,' the army sergeant told him. Johnson gripped the lanyard nervously, and then took one final look at the bright blue sky. He walked into the elevator, followed by the three troops, all of whom betrayed no emotion and kept their hands clenched behind their backs.
Johnson, in an effort to lighten the mood, jokingly said, "You're not gonna shoot me, are ya?" To his surprise, the troopers chuckled. The sergeant replied, "No, Mr. Johnson. It's just that this meeting is top secret." With that, he clicked the one button three times in a row, and then pushed the down button on the elevator. There was a lack of elevator music, which Johnson was a little disappointed at. After about thirty seconds, he was worried, and was about to ask how far down the group was going when the elevator doors opened. Johnson and the soldiers were in a well-lit cavern, with stone walls and an ovular floor plan. Johnson slicked back his short black hair and stepped out of the elevator. He began to walk towards a crescent-shaped table, which was the only piece of furniture in the room. Sitting at the table were four men and two women, with another, much younger woman standing nearby, writing in an old-fashioned journal. Johnson had to hold back a gasp as he recognized one of the men, who was featured prominently on television: President of the Unified Earth Government Akito Sato.
"Welcome, Corporal Johnson. No doubt you know who I am," the president said. He adjusted his glasses and stared with a cold glare at Johnson, who only replied with a nod. After a few seconds, he recognized his mistake, and said, "Yes, sir." The president was unimpressed. He motioned to his right. "These are Rear Admiral Hieronymus Stanforth of FLEETCOM, and Admiral Henry Carlo of NAVSPECWAR." The rear admiral, with light brown hair and bright blue eyes, nodded in Johnson's direction. His superior, with olive skin and greying black skin glanced briefly at the corporal, but quickly looked away. The president continued. "To my left is Admiral Athena Caldwell of NavLogCom, Vice Admiral Ysionris Jeromi of the Med Corps and Rear Admiral Margaret Parangosky, representing ONI." The former of the two women uncrossed her arms to slightly wave her hand, while the man sitting next to her smiled at him. The rear admiral did absolutely nothing, not even looking at him like Admiral Carlo had done. "Who's she, then?" Johnson asked, pointing to the woman writing in her journal. She had short, neatly combed black hair and had piercing blue eyes, and she was wearing a lab coat. The woman couldn't have been older than twenty. She looked up at Johnson. "Catherine Elizabeth Halsey," she said. "I am an intern at ONI and I am currently studying under Rear Admiral Parangosky's tutelage." She resumed writing in her journal. Johnson took note of her, but turned his attention to the president. "The memo said you wanted me to relay information about my mission on Mamore, sir."
"Precisely, Corporal. Spare no details. Tell us what went right and what went wrong." The men and women in the room, even the intern Halsey, stared at Johnson. He couldn't lie even if he wanted to.
"Well, we infiltrated the facility after being dropped off. Two snipers climbed the mesa we had put the Pelicans behind to-"
"Corporal Johnson, without the snipers, would your mission have ended in failure?" Parangosky asked.
"Well, they certainly took out more rebels than the rest of us," Johnson recanted. "We might not have failed, but a lot more than seven of us would've been killed. Anyways, the snipers took out the guards, and we went into the camp. One of our soldiers was taken out by an enemy sniper. Our team engaged in a firefight with the rebel forces. One man was killed by a pistol shot to the back right in front of me." Johnson watched out of the corner of his eye as Halsey wrote something in her journal. 'What is she taking notes about?' he wondered. He continued, "I got to the missiles and tried to disarm them, but they had been dismantled, had the important components taken out, and put back together. We took out a Warthog, and later a Scorpion, but suffered casualties due to them."
"Do you think better armor may have given your troops better chances to survive?"
"Of course, Mister President."
"And how did the soldiers react during the battle? Were they on-task, or were they cocky?"
"Mostly they were focused, but the thrill of battle got to them, and they might've not looked before they leapt. If you grasp my meaning, Admiral Carlo."
"I do, Johnson. Now, does anyone else have any more questions?" Immediately, Halsey raised her voice again.
"Corporal, what do you think would have made it possible to complete that mission without any casualties?"
Johnson stood still, and said nothing for quite some time. "Well, better armor for one thing. I guess…well, we're the best soldiers there are. We took rigorous training, ran all the simulations and mastered them, and the biochemical enhancements certainly helped a lot. I don't think it would be possible to find better troops. They weren't born for the combat we endured."
Halsey stared intensely at Johnson, as if a realization had struck her. "Neither were you,' she said in a menacing tone. She whispered something in Parangosky's ear. The older woman piqued up at whatever it was Halsey said, and motioned for Halsey to repeat it to the president, which she did. The president was aghast. "No! We could never! It's inhumane, we couldn't do that!"
"Sir, with all due respect, we don't want another Mamore to occur," Parangosky said. The president mulled it over, then said, "Leave us," to the army soldiers. When they walked up to the elevator, he said, "You too, Mr. Johnson. Thank you for your contributions."
"Sir, are you trying to make more ORION troops? Your predecessor deemed them ineffective to end the Insurrectionist threat. He said the casu-"
"I'm well aware of what Miguel Ortiz said, and I know what his reasons were for terminating a continuation of ORION soldiers. I've said enough. If you wish to keep your rank, leave us now. My colleagues and I have important matters to discuss." Johnson said nothing, but followed the trio of army troopers into the elevator. "What do you suppose that was all about?" he asked the sergeant. The brown-haired man just shrugged. "Something about the soldiers of tomorrow or some crap like that? I dunno."
"In my experience," Johnson replied, "the soldiers of tomorrow are the ones born today."
March 7, 2511
Elysium City, Eridanus II
The hospital room was crammed full of people. There were five doctors, along with a young man and his wife. The wife was partaking in the extremely painful process of giving birth, and the doctors were trying to ensure that she and the soon-to-be-newborn were stable and healthy. The woman conversed violently. "C'mon, push! That's it, that it! You're doing great honey, just-"
"Shut up!" the woman cried. She let out one more agonizing shriek as the doctors finally removed something from inside of her, and the cries of a newborn baby filled the room instantaneously. Quickly, one of the doctors rushed to get the blood off the newborn. Another one turned to the new father. "Congratulations, Mr. Jones," he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. "It's a boy." The doctor came back with the boy wrapped in a towel and presented him to his exhausted mother. "Do you two have a name picked out?" she inquired. The father nodded. As the doctors finished up with removing the umbilical cord from his wife, he told the doctor the name of his son. "We decided to name him after both of our fathers. Strangely enough, they both had the same name. It's a fairly common one, but still."
"Really? What's the little tyke's name gonna be then?" the doctor asked. The father responded with a simple, one-word reply:
"John."