The Coward of Reach

Chapter One: I'm Not Spartan

I never thought I'd see the Master Chief. Never thought I'd see MJOLNIR VI armor. I never even really thought I'd ever see a Spartan.

But I did.

Let's start at the beginning. I don't wanna get ahead of myself. Okay, let's see. It all started on Reach, during the Covenant attack. My name back then was "Private Daniel Moller", not just Danny. And I'd never seen warfare like this before.

"Private!" Officer Harvey shouted. "Take out that plasma tanker!"

"Yessir!" I shouted. I signaled to my squad with a quick nod. The slammed a clip of ammo into my battle rifle and sprinted down the bloody streets.

"Jackals," said Private Peter Sanchi. "Shit." He fired his SMG like a maniac at the group of shielded Covenant. That guy wasn't afraid of nothing.

I was. I was so damn scared I wanted to piss in my pants. I wanted to just run for cover, duck behind a bench or something and wait for Pete and Joe and Harvey to just kill those stupid Covenant. But I knew I couldn't. I knew that when a joined the Marines, I swore to be brave. And that wouldn't be very brave. So I just thought of them.

The Spartans. They were so damn amazing. They just shot through the Grunts and Jackals and Elites like they were a pile of horse shit. So basically, I'm not Spartan.

"Moller!" Harvey shouted, blasting the hell outta those Jackals with a Plasma Rifle. "C'mon, coward!" I sighed, and ran into the killzone.

My battle rifle flared and I winced as hot plasma shot past me. I threw a frag grenade and blew up some Jackals.

"All good," Private Joseph Mincin said as he shot down the last Jackal.

"Nice one, Joey," I said. Joey grinned.

We continued. I lagged behind the rest of the squad, just as scared as I had been before. We found an abandoned Warthog and decided to take it to the plasma tanker.

I'm not really much of a driver, so I took up the turret. I fired it like hell at passing Shadows, but didn't really do much damage. I'm not much of a shooter, either.

"Ghosts!" Pete, driving, yelled. I looked to my left and saw a whole squadron of 'em. I concentrated my fire on the Elite pilots, but a group of Grunts protected them like a shield. Damn. Now those guys are brave. Unlike me.

"We're being overrun!" the Marines fighting all the Grunts and Ghosts and stuff were gettin pasted. I fired but just couldn't hit those stupid Ghosts.

Shit. An Elite's boarded the Warthog!

"Pete!" I yelled, firing at the Elite who pushed him off the Warthog.

"Dammit, we need back up!" Harvey shouted as he jumped out of the Warthog's passenger seat. Even with both of us concentrating fire on the Elite, we just couldn't seem to kill 'im.

I jumped out of the turret and fired from the ground.

"Sir!" I cried to Harvey. "Permission to call for backup?"

"Hell yeah!" I put my radio transmitter on, firing at the Elite the whole time, and called Lord Hood.

"Hood," I said into the transmitter, "we need backup on the Beta Reach Region. Can you apply?" I almost heard him grin from the other side.

"We're sendin someone special."