Sammy Skirmisher and the Needler Crystal Mines
A Halo fanfic by: Sparky L. Jolteon (originally completed 3/11/13).
*Prologue*
The year is A.D. 2550. Humanity and the Covenant are in the middle of a great war for control of the Milky Way, and both sides fight with valor and conviction of what they believe to be a just enough cause. For the humans, this simply means survival as a species, while for the Covenant, it means eliminating those they deem to be sacrilegious and an affront to the race they revere as gods, the Forerunners. The galaxy reeks of war across tens of thousands of light-years and throughout hundreds of individual star systems. However, one place that remains relatively peaceful is the distant planet of Chu'ot, and orbiting the planet itself, a smaller moon called Eayn. It is here and now where our protagonist Samuel Oliver Skirmisher (this is the rough English translation of his native name, Sam Yol Sim) is born into a humble Skirmisher household consisting of both his parents and nearly fifteen siblings. Sammy is the smallest offspring from his mother's second brood of eggs, and proves to be a rather feisty skirmisher child, especially for a runt.
Fast-forward fourteen years to A.D. 2564, and after seeing much combat and gaining a great deal of firsthand combat experience within the Covenant military, Sammy is now a battle-hardened veteran of the skirmisher forces, and having achieved the coveted rank of champion, he has finally garnered enough authority to lead small groups of lesser troops under his own command. By now, a lot of things have changed in the world around him as well. Most humans and most Covenant are presently united in a fairly tentative alliance, and the events surrounding Harvest, Arcadia, Shield World 0459, Reach, Installation 04, Earth, Installation 05, the Ark, neo-Installation 04, and Requiem are all but fairly distant memories in the minds of most, but the lessons learned and the consequences sown from said encounters are all still very real in the lives of many alive today. Sammy is certainly no exception. It was he who saw his fair share of action during the events on Reach and select space battles occurring from 2552-2557. In most of those conflicts, he proved to be a particularly vicious warrior, sometimes slaying as many as fifty UNSC soldiers in a single battle. He accomplished this mostly by fighting from range armed with his inborn sense of marksmanship coupled with a needle rifle, a Covenant carbine, a focus rifle, or even a beam rifle if he was lucky enough to get his paws on one, as the overwhelming majority of beam rifles were partitioned off exclusively for use by jackal snipers. That is not to assume that he is a shoddy fighter in close quarters engagements though, for in some cases, he was a more brilliant close-range fighter than most others within his regiment despite "only" being a skirmisher. Only is a relative word of course, since some elites and perhaps even an isolated brute or two were jealous of his exceptional prowess, although they would never tell him that outright.
Nowadays, he is exceedingly proud of both his position and his talents, and strongly tends to show a high level of consideration for his fellow infantrymen in the combat zone, even the lowliest grunt or the most insignificant drone. As such, he yields a good deal of trust and admiration from all under his supervision, which is absolutely crucial for any competent Covenant commander. With each passing day, he grows a little bit wiser and a little bit more influential within the Covenant military, and as each day's new challenge comes, he faces each one head-on and with a renewed vigor virtually unparalleled by his fellow officers. Anticipating his future to be even brighter than his past, he looks forward to living life to the fullest and outperforming all others in the process. This is his story.