I've been writing a few chapters of this and decided to post the first one. Let me know what you think.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Halo or any of the characters within with the exception of my original characters. 343 Industries, Bungie, Microsoft, et. al., own the Halo IP and all characters that are not my own.
The purpose of this story is to provide a concrete ending for Edward Buck, Veronica Dare, and the squad ("Dutch", "Mickey", and "Romeo") from Halo 3: ODST. The fic is canon with Halo 4 and is meant to fit in like a Halo Expanded Universe novel.
1. Arrival
Ruins of New Chicago, Aurelius, June 23rd, 2555
Sasik is afraid.
This is not uncommon for the Unggoy, when faced against a super opponent. The Unggoy are cannon fodder for the Covenant and the entire species knows it. The Kig-Yar at least have specialties given out to them, most frequently sniping. The Unggoy? It was Sasik's observation that they were basically there to die so the Sangheili, Jiralhanae, Lekgolo, Kig-Yar, and even the aggravating Yanme'e would not have to.
The problem was, on this forsaken planet, cut off from the rest of the war, the Covenant were running out of Unggoy to send into the field to die. And this is enraging the damned Sangheili in charge to no end.
He dives behind cover as one of his brethren takes a sniper's bullet right through the gas mask. He hears his companion's gas container explode, causing an explosion to tear through the area, and forces himself to take a deep, methane-filled breath. The one advantage his small size gives him is that he can hide behind anything as long as it is solid and he is safe.
His only weapon is a Needler. It is a treasured weapon among the Unggoy. The Needler is actually lethal. The Plasma Pistol is close to useless, at least in Sasik's eyes. The Plasma Pistol overheats after merely a few shots, and the time it took the pistol to cool down after firing a charged shot just left the Unggoy wide open to getting slaughtered, especially if the Unggoy in question missed. But even a Needler is useless against a sniper.
Especially a sniper who is constantly changing positions. Sasik doesn't understand. The world was almost completely glassed, as per the Covenant's typical course of action. There should be no humans left alive. But one was. And Sasik knows exactly what human was still alive in this slagheap of a planet.
It's one of the demons. It has to be what the humans called a Spartan, or what the Covenant called a "demon". Has to be.
There's no other way.
Somehow, one of the demons survived the glassing and is wreaking havoc. Has wreaked havoc for a long time. It's been five years since this world fell to the Covenant. This demon, or possibly a team of them, had caused enough damage that a contingent of Covenant was left behind on this world specifically to eliminate this demon. This was a holy war, and all humans had to die. Especially the demons, who were resourceful, and powerful, enough to steal Covenant vehicles and potentially get offworld.
Thousands of Covenant had been left behind to deal with this guerrilla warfare. They're being whittled down, little by little. And no matter where they search, all they find is more slag, more ruin. Where, possibly, could the demon be hiding? And why can't anyone in the Covenant kill it?
Sasik sees a Sangheili run into the open, barking orders at the cowering Unggoy that remain such as Sasik himself. It's one of the blue Sangheili, which shows the Sangheili's inexperience in battle. The armor is fresh, clean. It wouldn't surprise Sasik if the Sangheili spent most of his military duty in the rear, and was only been forced out here because the Covenant were running out of troops.
It also didn't surprise Sasik when the Sangheili was shot in the head by the sniper. The first shot fried the Sangheili's shields, which made the Sangheili stagger briefly, in a daze, but before the Sangheli could do anything more, a second shot cracked and the Sangheli crumpled to the ground, bleeding blue blood.
"Run away!" screams one of the Unggoy. About five or six others join him in getting up and running off of the battlefield. Sasik has seen this happen before too. When the Unggoy run, they die. If they're lucky, maybe one or two of them will make it to safety.
Sasik? He was content to remain hiding behind his rock, and just wait for the sniper to go away.
He sees a plasma grenade suddenly attach itself to one of the fleeing Unggoy in the group. The Unggoy in question throws up his hands and runs towards the others in a panic. "Get it off of me!"
"Stay away from us!" shouts back one of the others, but it's too late.
It's always too late.
An explosion erupts, followed by several others as the other plasma grenades equipped by the Unggoy go off in succession. The bodies of the Unggoy fly all over the battlefield, two of them right over Sasik's head.
Sasik has heard many of the humans laugh in glee over the erroneous, clumsy panic of the typical Unggoy. In a way, Sasik understands. The Unggoy really are a pathetic race in this Covenant, and this was their fate in life. To be a joke for the enemy and a meat shield for their supposed "allies".
Sasik is going to have none of that. He isn't going to die as a joke. He knows what he is going to do. He's going to sit and wait. Eventually the sniper will conclude there's nothing left alive and would leave. Then Sasik will make his move and flee. That's how it usually works. It works wonders. Better than running in a panic like his brethren and getting slaughtered.
He has several hours left in his air tank. That's all he was going to need. Just wait out three or four hours, then make a go for it. Run off the battlefield and back to his superiors, and be berated over the Covenant's failure to kill the demon, or demons, yet again. Especially as they're running out of troops and resources, and there's to sign that any reinforcements from the Covenant were coming.
Sasik wonders if there even is a Covenant anymore. They have been cut off for so long there's no telling what had happened in the war. Sasik summarizes that it can't be anything good for the Covenant. Otherwise supplies and reinforcements would've arrived by now.
He waits. Tries not to think about the possibility of anything going wrong. Hoping that no Sangheili will come along with reinforcements and restart a battle that just plain could not be won.
Silence. Dead silence. Can Sasik dare to keep breathing? Could he hope that his wildest dream would come true?
That's when he hears the footstep behind him.
Sasik spins and saw the human. And it is not like anything he had ever expected.
She is no demon. She is a child. Can't be older than eighteen in the humans' years. Long red hair and blue eyes, her body and clothes hidden underneath a brown, worn cloak.
She has one of the human pistols, the one with the scope that the Covenant feared, aimed right for his head.
Sasik knows one of the human tongues. He had spent time during the war deciphering human transmissions. It had been a peaceful job. It had been a job Sasik liked. It made him feel smarter and feel important, not like he was just some piece of cannon fodder.
He chooses to use it. "You're . . . you're no demon."
"Demon?" Much to Sasik's surprise, the girl chooses to respond to him. It's more surprising than him getting the human tongue correct. "You mean a Spartan."
So, she knows of the Covenant's derogatory nickname for the humans' super-soldier. "Yes."
The girl's eyes and grip on her pistol do not waver. Sasik's eyes move and see the sniper rifle slung across her back, and he feels a little better. He would have felt trulyhumiliated if this girl had decimated them all with just a pistol.
"I may be no 'demon', but . . . I was trained by one." Sasik can tell by her tone that she has no interest in continuing the conversation. She was exposed, out in the open, and if any Covenant come out here she will be dead unless she has backup in those woods up the hill she had been shooting from.
"You were trained by a demon?" Sasik asks.
"Yes," the girl says. "And I'm showing the Covenant what will happen if they keep crossing into this area, which is what they've done for the last five years."
"Death," Sasik replies.
"Yes and no," the girl says. "You will die, true, but you know what demons do, yes?"
"Hell," Sasik says, his heart sinking into his chest as he realizes the implications behind the girl's words. "You're going to send us into hell."
"Exactly. Glad we understand each other," the girl says.
She's looking through the pistol's scope now. Sasik knows its going to end.
"Yes," Sasik says with resignation. Many of his brethren would beg for mercy, or make one futile attempt to run, but Sasik would face his death with dignity. He would not die the way other Unggoy died, to please his masters or unwittingly entertain the enemy. "We do."
Sasik hears the shot and sees the flash and feels the impact.
And all that follows is the dark.
The Ulysses, in Aurelius orbit, June 25th, 2555
"We're not doing this," growled Sergeant Taylor H. "Dutch" Miles as he rubbed his three-day beard. "We're seriously can't be doing this. I thought we were supposed to be done with, well, everything. We won the war two years ago, didn't we?"
"We're here now, aren't we?" asked Lance-Corporal Michael "Mickey" Crespo, who, like Dutch, had been promoted up one rank following the end of the Human-Covenant War in 2552. "Have been here for a few hours. We agreed to this mission over a month ago. Aren't you done asking the question?"
Dutch growled and his head leaned against the window staring down at the world of Aurelius below them.
For his part, Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck could only shake his head. The whole squad knew what they were getting themselves into, and yet they bitched anyway. Then again, considering how Buck felt after waking up from cyrosleep four hours ago, he couldn't blame them. He wanted to complain too.
The war had ended, and yet the squad was still in service. Granted, most of it was peaceful, just wandering from planet to planet, looking for any survivors of glassed planets, occasionally mop up stranded Covenant who refused to believe the war was over. It was nothing to be overly concerned about, or anything truly dangerous.
But this mission was different. It was different because Captain Veronica Dare was coming along for this one. And Edward Buck knew all too well what had happened the last time he had gotten involved in one of Dare's affairs.
He was very, very lucky that none of his squad had gotten killed that night in New Mombasa. Or had gotten killed since in any of the mop-up operations run since then against stubborn Covenant for that matter. Though for most of those mop-ups there were Elites around to persuade the Covenant, one way or another, that the war was over.
As far as Buck knew, no Elites were around this time. And that made him concerned. That meant that Dare was up to something she didn't want the Elites to know about.
This mission is just going to be a nice ray of sunshine, he thought.
Veronica Dare, for her part, was motioning for the squad to come over. "All right boys, it's time for the briefing before we move in here. We're not just trying to mop up a few random Covenant here. We're here to find something."
"A fetch quest for Veronica Dare," said the fourth member of the team, Kojo "Romeo" Agu. "Do I need to remind you what happened the last time we did one of these?"
"It's not going to happen this time," Veronica said. "We're not going to drop in and make an assault. We're just going to fly-over and provide support from Pelicans and Falcons. We have specialized ground-pounders for the heavy-duty combat here."
"Uh huh," Romeo said. "Sure we do."
"Yes, we do," said a new, female voice from behind them.
Buck turned, and sighed immediately upon seeing her. He wasn't surprised at all.
The armor. The imposing figure. Not as big as the second in the series or even the third, but still quite strong.
A Spartan.
"Figures," Buck said. "Let me guess, you're a Spartan Special? Spartan Magnificent? What do they call new Spartans now?"
"Spartan-IV," the woman replied curtly. The woman just rubbed Buck the wrong way. She seemed severe and serious and completely caught up in military protocol without any sense of improvisation. The slicked back, tied-back hair just added to the severity of her appearance and voice.
"Right. Spartan-IVs. Right off the UNSC assembly line," Buck muttered. He didn't have any bias against the Spartans, hell, a Spartan under the callsign of 'Noble Six' gave him the air cover he needed to get his soldiers and some civilians out of Reach about three years ago now. But it just amazed him how more and more kept popping out of the woodwork, and he was wondering the legality of it.
"The Spartan-IV program is not like the Spartan-II and Spartan-III programs," the woman replied. "My name is Sarah Palmer. I assure you we are all professional soldiers and volunteered for the project willingly."
"Right. Sure," Romeo said. It looked like the rest of the squad looked skeptical as well. They had all seen the work of Spartan-IIs and IIIs. While their body of work was impressive, many of them seemed to have something off about them, especially the Spartan-IIIs. Buck recalled that 'Noble Six' hardly said a word to him while providing him air cover. So few words, that Buck couldn't even remember if 'Noble Six' was male or female. The voice of 'Noble Six' was lost in a cacophony of the thousands of voices he had heard during the Human-Covenant War.
"Anyway," Veronica Dare said, "We should get down to business. And that probably means waking up your rookie behind you, Buck."
"Huh?" Buck turned around to see the last member of the team snoozing away. "Oh right. Yo, New Rookie. Get up! We got things to do!"
The last member of Buck's squad groaned. "Hey, come on! I asked you to not call me that. I have a name, Derek Carmi-"
"And your callsign is 'New Rookie'," Buck replied. "Deal with it."
New Rookie groaned, but he got up and walked over to the holographic briefing table.
"Thank you, Buck," Veronica replied, with just a bit of an edgy, lopsided smile.
Buck just sighed. "You're welcome. Now let's get on with it."
He also wanted to talk to Veronica about more personal matters. He and Veronica still hadn't restarted their relationship. Hell, she had been hard just to track down after the war, she had been running around doing all kinds of secretive Office of Naval Intelligence-related things. One of the primary reasons why he agreed to this mission was so he could finally talk to her and figure out what was up.
Of course, he hadn't realized that meant not knowing what the mission was until they were literally orbiting the planet where the mission was going to take place!
This definitely had shades of New Mombasa all over again. The only consolation was that the Covenant down there weren't going to be as organized, and that they would have these Spartan wannabes.
"The planet of Aurelius was captured by the Covenant in the year 2550," Veronica said. "The capture of Aurelius is partially what put the Covenant on the path to Reach. For the most part, it looks like Aurelius was a standard-issue capture by the Covenant. Infiltration followed by invasion followed by the obliteration of most resistance followed by a glassing of the planet. Well, besides what the Covenant decided to keep for themselves."
"Which isn't very much," Mickey said.
"No, usually it's not," Veronica agreed. "But we're not after whatever the Covenant kept to themselves. We're after something else. An A.I., named 'Leo'."
"As in Leonardo Da Vinci?" Romeo offered.
Not exactly," Veronica said. "I believe it is short for 'Leopold'. He talks with a rather stuffy British accent from what I've heard."
"Oh great," Dutch groaned. "And let me guess, the A.I. is probably rampant too."
"Most likely," Veronica said. "A.I. usually go rampant after seven years. It's been ten since Leopold went into service."
That didn't bode well. Buck had seen a couple of rampant A.I. before. It wasn't pretty. It made the nervous breakdowns he had seen in soldiers look like cakewalks.
"But, we don't necessarily need Leopold," Veronica said. "Just the information he carries. He was placed on Aurelius as part of an effort to provide a solid translation of every Covenant language, from the Grunts to the Elites to the Brutes to even Jackal. If we can extract the data from him, we can always press another A.I. into service to finish the job."
"That is, if he didn't delete it all on us," Buck said.
"A.I., even if they go rampant, don't usually abandon their mission. They just become obsessed with it," Veronica replied. "So I don't think we need to worry about that. We just need to worry about getting the data and hoping Leopold is sane enough to let that happen."
"I have brought along four Spartan fireteams," Sarah Palmer said. "Fireteams Ivy, Domino, Kodiak, and Tiger. That's twenty Spartans alongside myself and the H.Q. team. We're going to doing most of the ground-pounding and Covenant-killing. If there are any civilians still alive down there we'll be rescuing them as well."
"Then why the hell are we comin' along on this Spartan love-fest?" Dutch asked.
"Your squad is going to be my bodyguards," Veronica said. "My mission is once Leopold is found, I'm to land and either get him to give me the information or force it out of him. I've brought along my own A.I. for that, Camellia."
"Sounds all fine and everything," Mickey said, "But twenty Spartans and the five of us aren't that much of a force. The Ulysses can hold a lot more people than that, and there's probably a lot of Covenant down there itching to get us all killed."
Veronica smiled. "I took that into account. We have a full ODST company and a mechanized battalion of Marines onboard the Ulysses to provide backup if Covenant resistance is more intense than expected. Not to mention the usual array of Hornets and Pelicans, not to mention Broadsword and Sabre fighters. Aurelius stopped being strategically important to the Covenant after the fall of Reach, so we don't honestly expect much resistance, but if there is some . . . better safe than sorry."
"Bodyguards," Romeo said. "I'm strangely okay with that."
"Good," Veronica said. "Because we're moving out in less than an hour. Get your troopers geared up, Buck."
"I'll get my teams ready to go," Sarah Palmer said, and she turned and left the room in a hurry.
"We need to talk," Buck said.
"We can talk after I'm done picking Leopold's invisible technological brain," Veronica replied. It was the answer Buck was expecting, but it still greatly annoyed him.
She did smile then. "I promise."
It was just genuine enough to give Buck a small amount of hope that was like a little boy being promised chocolate. "All right."
He heard all of his troopers, including New Rookie, snickering behind him. He sighed. Some days, you just couldn't win.
"Seriously," Veronica said, the smile fading. "This is important, Buck. With Leopold's information we could perfectly translate the languages of the Covenant. No more translation errors, and we could have A.I. do all of the talking for us."
"I get it. Great big new hope or something like that," Buck replied. "I'm all for it. Just, when this is over . . ."
"We'll talk," Veronica said. "Promise."
"Thank you."
Buck let Veronica leave then, and turned back towards his troopers. They immediately stood to attention, almost in a comically robotic manner.
"All right. You heard the lady. Gear up. We're not dropping in by drop pod this time so gather as much ammo and rations as you can, we're going in by Pelican, and there's no guarantee we won't be doing a lot of shooting."
"Knowing how things usually go with us, Sarge," Mickey said, "I expect a lot of gratuitous violence and more than a few explosions before this is over."
Buck didn't argue. It was the truth more often than he liked to admit. "Which is why we're gearing up. Now get a move on, especially you, New Rookie."
"You really are calling me that," New Rookie replied.
"Yes I am, and you will like it," Buck said pointedly. "Now let's-"
Alarms going off.
"See?" Mickey shouted above the din. "See what I mean? The violence is starting already!"
"We don't know that!" Buck snapped back. He ran to a radio com. "Bridge, what's the situation up there? What the hell is going on?"
He heard a human voice reply, he had no idea if it was the captain or just a flunky. "It's a proximity alarm! We have incoming Banshees and Phantoms from the planet! We're also detecting anti-ship energy shots from the ground as well!"
Oh, that's not good. Buck immediately thought about chasing after Veronica, but he knew doing so would mean abandoning his men. He had learned after New Mombasa that it was something he just could not do.
Dutch ran to the window. "Um, Sarge . . ."
"What?" Buck ran towards the window and looked down at the planet . . . and he saw several neon violet lights seeming to get bigger and bigger as they got closer to the Ulysses.
"What is that?" Buck asked, even though he knew the answer.
Mickey appeared to Buck's right. "Looks like a bunch of killer Covenant death beams, Sarge. And we're gonna get hit."
"Right," Buck said. "All right, make that we're packing in less than five minutes! Oh and . . ."
Buck just shook his head. "Brace for impact."
The ship rocked then as if it was going to explode on the spot, and Buck fell to the ground, the entire room spinning and shaking.
Note to self: never go on another Veronica Dare mission again.
He wondered if he would live long enough to implement this self-imposed advice . . .