Victor watched as John, Kelly, and Sam exited the dropship. He had an odd feeling, but couldn't quite place the source. He waited, though. He saw Kelly fall from the ship, and suddenly had to resist the urge to stop her. The feeling was growing, and he knew that if he didn't act, this would be the last he saw of the three of them.
"Alright, Spartans, one hour to dirt." Their sergeant said. "We're the advance team, and the other four dropships will join us tomorrow. Let's take Reach back from these Cove-" Victor stood.
"Sir, Kelly's about to be killed." The sergeant started to get angry, but calmed down before the feeling could gain a foothold. Spartans were trained to trust their gut, and fight like hell.
"Well, go on, then. Open her up, pilot!" The sergeant yelled the last part toward the Pelican cockpit. The rear hatch opened, and Victor dove out after John, Kelly and Sam. He fell toward the Covenant cruiser, and saw that it was about to discharge its weapons. Its energy shields parted, and the plasma burst forth, barely missing the UNSC Pillar of Autumn. Victor neared the gun, and waited for the shields to part again. When they did, he dove, falling through the shields and around the gun before it could fire. A few meters down the Covenant hull was the hole that Pillar of Autumn's MAC gun had punched.
Victor climbed inside, seeing Kelly disappear around a corner. He climbed to the doorway and opened it, but the trio of Spartans had already rounded another bend and gone through an airlock. Victor followed them, through corridors, around dead Elites, Grunts, and Jackals, and found the three green-clad Spartans standing next to a broken window with a warhead. Kelly was talking, and Victor could hear that she was crying. After a few moments, Sam took the warhead from John.
"There's no time. Not enough of a delay. My suit's punctured anyway. I leave, I die. I stay, I die. There's no way around it." Kelly straightened, and walked away with John. Victor approached Sam. "Fifteen." He said. Victor crept closer, starting to step harder. Sam whirled around, raising his assault rifle. When he saw a Spartan, he relaxed. Then he realized that his armor was gray instead of the usual green, and he tensed again. "What's with the armor?" Sam asked.
"Lets me blend in with the shadow. Painted it myself." Victor tried to reassure him with a human voice. Sam had also noticed Victor's weapon of choice. Instead of the fully automatic assault rifle, the gray Spartan held a semi-automatic Designated Marksman Rifle, or DMR. That wasn't the end of the irregularities, though. Instead of the usual 2x scope on the DMR, there was a 5x scope. And instead of the usual M6D pistol, the gray Spartan's sidearm was an old-fashioned UNSC Navy pistol. The gray Spartan also had a long combat knife sheathed on his left forearm. Finally, the Spartan had a dark-tinted visor instead of the normal shiny gold visor. Sam relaxed still, because none of this suggested Covenant. Victor approached more quickly.
"Let me see that warhead." Sam handed it over. Then, Victor remembered that Sam's suit was punctured. He slipped a hand into a pouch and pulled out a strip of leather. He laid it over Sam's wound, and pulled out a small device. He slipped the device into a slot in the leather strip, and flipped a switch. The device pulled the leather out until a vacuum was made, and it sucked the strip back. Now, Sam's suit was sealed. Victor took the device back and flipped the switch on the warhead.
"Nobody to hold off," he said, "so run." The pair took off running, and knew that their three minutes would soon be up. Finally, they reached the twisted metal hole that Pillar of Autumn's MAC gun had punched. They jumped out through the firing hole in the cruiser's shields.
"Close your eyes!" Victor shouted, realizing that he had subconsciously counted the delay on the warhead's detonation. Just in time, he clamped his eyes shut. The Covenant cruiser exploded.
Victor woke up. The memory was a good one, so it wasn't a jolting awakening, but rather a slow, gentle one. Sam had been from mission to mission, though, and Kelly and John still thought he was dead. 27 years, and neither Spartan knew that Sam hadn't been fried in the belly of the cruiser. John, for his part, had also been from mission to mission. In fact, he was about to launch in a Pelican with Spartans Linda and James. They were going to take space station Gamma orbiting the planet Reach, which would be a good start to take the planet back from the Covenant. In fact, Victor was going with them, although they didn't know it.
He stepped into his suit, deactivating the security system and turning on the HUD. Immediately, his motion sensors showed him a white arrow, him, and several clusters of yellow pings, which would be other UNSC troops. He flipped his comms to the Master Chief's frequency, and listened as he briefed Linda and James.
"James, your job is to reactivate the MAC gun. Then use it on those cruisers. We can't have them glassing Reach. Believe it or not, this one station could make the difference." John's voice crackled over the comms. "And Linda, you'll be with me on cleanup."
"Aw," Linda joked, "Do I have to clean the station? It's awful big." Victor ran toward the docking station that they were at, and found them loading into the Pelican. He climbed into his own Pelican, painted black to blend in with the black, cold infinity of space. He took off before them, to make sure they didn't know they were being followed. He turned a few laps, then started following the green drop-ship as it emerged from Pillar of Autumn. Before Victor knew it, the Pelican he was following was nearing the station, but it wasn't slowing down. Sam approached from the back of Victor's Pelican.
"I knew you'd follow them." Victor wasn't surprised.
"I knew you'd follow me." Suddenly, a voice came over Victor's comms.
"We're coming in too fast."
"We could stop, but then we'd be off course." Linda put in. "We'd have to be able to stop in less than five seconds, which is impossible with these modifications." The Pelican didn't slow. They would have missed the station had that happened. Instead, they simply crashed into it, greasing several Covenant troops.
"I need to help the Spartans on Reach." Victor told Sam, and left no room for objections. "I may see you again, I may not." And Victor leaped out the back of the Pelican, shooting toward Reach at high speeds.
Then, he slowed down. He wasn't going to make it in time to do anything. Suddenly, a MAC round tore through space, shattering a nearby Covenant cruiser's shields. Victor saw an opportunity. A second round punched a hole in the cruiser, and Victor could see the power core. He ripped the warhead from his back and primed it, throwing it like a football into the hole. It detonated right next to the power core, and the entire ship was destroyed. The explosion propelled Victor through space and toward Reach. He fired his thrusters, and tore toward the planet fast enough that he would burn up upon entry into the atmosphere. Just as he was about to do so, he turned the direction of his thrusters, then disabled them altogether. He neared the ground, where he drained his thrusters to slow his descent, then dropped them into a ravine. He locked his armor, then landed inside a ring of Spartans.
When Victor stood, he saw that he was surrounded by five Spartans. One had dark blue armor and held a DMR. The second was large, held a Warthog turret, and had green and yellow armor. The third was dressed in silver armor and held an assault rifle. The fourth had green armor on with a bit of red trim, and held a shotgun. His visor reached from his chin to his scalp, and was shiny gold with a smiling skull on the front. He had a kukri on his right shoulder. The last was dressed in a darker green armor, and had a green netting draped around him. He had a marksman helmet and a sniper rifle.
"Who are you?" The blue Spartan said.
"I am Victor, Spartan oh-sixty-three." Without any warning, Sam slammed feet-first into the ground next to Victor. "Oh," Victor continued, "And, apparently, Sam, Spartan... oh... thirty-four?" Sam laughed, in spite of the moment.
"Not even close, Vic."
"Well," the blue-clad Spartan said. "I'm Carter, Noble One of our Noble team. That," Carter pointed at the sniper, "is Jun, Noble 3. Emile, Noble 4," was the skull-visored one with the kukri, "Jorge, Noble 5," was the large one, "and Six. Noble 6," was the silver-armored one.
"Six doesn't get a name?" Victor joked. "And where...?" Victor almost asked about Noble 2, but then realized that he must have died.
"No, Six doesn't get a name." Carter was unamused. Victor got one of his feelings again. He dove to the left, tackling Sam and Jorge, and a fuel rod flew over where they had just been. They looked up, and saw that sixteen Elite Zealots were gathered in a group. Four had fuel rod guns, and the other twelve had energy swords. They growled.
One spoke, and Victor was surprised to hear calm English from that wretched maw. "Attack."
The swordsmen surged forward around the ones with the fuel rod guns. They weren't done, though. The sixteen had been on a hill, and dozens, scores, hundreds poured over the hill with them. Four fuel rods burst forth, flying toward the ring of men. Carter immediately shot one, and it exploded, killing three sword Elites. Victor rolled a grenade forward, pulling out his combat knife as a distraction. When the grenade detonated, it killed all four wielding fuel rod guns. One of the Elites tripped, and his energy sword deactivated and rolled toward Victor. Before he could pick it up, Noble Six leaped from behind a boulder and snatched it, oddly, with his left hand. In his right he clutched a pistol, and, thus equipped, he stormed through the ranks of Elites. Several more energy swords flew from dead hands, and Victor picked one up, tossing his combat knife to Emile. Now, the three Spartans were like whirlwinds, dispatching Elites left and right. Behind them, Sam was emptying clip after clip of M6D bullets. Jorge was firing rapidly into the Elites as well, and Carter was picking off the most threatening. Jun was unseen, but every second or so one to three Elites would fall from one bullet. When Carter had emptied several clips, he dropped his DMR. He picked up Emile's shotgun, instead, and attached an energy sword crossways behind the barrel. When activated, the sword was like a bayonet. After a few minutes, Jorge set down his mini-gun and charged at the Elites fists first. Sam also moved forward, but continued with his dual-wield pistols.
Victor was like a tornado. He swung and leaped and spun through the Elites, chopping, slashing, stabbing, slicing. He must have killed fifty Elites before one smacked him. The side of the energy sword hit him like a ton of bricks. He flew from the hill, falling down the ravine. He locked up his armor, landed, and blacked out.
Victor opened his eyes. He started to move, and turned off his armor lock. It had been draining and recharging for however long he had been unconscious. He looked around of a vehicle, and found, of all things, a bicycle. The brown ravine was flat, though, and the bicycle would allow Victor to move faster. He pedaled along the ravine, found a wall, and turned back. When he reached the other end, he saw a sort of docking platform. There were two MAC guns mounted above it, and Emile was behind one. A Pelican flew over the platform as well, firing down on it. Noble Six, Jorge, and Sam were storming that platform. Jun was out of sight, but Victor knew that he would be sniping from above.
Victor started to roll down the hill on the bicycle, and built up speed twice as fast as his sprint. He saw and angled rock jutting from the red sand and turned toward it. He hit the rock and his bicycle flew in a high, long arc toward the series of platforms. The bike started to lose altitude, and Victor moved slightly to jump off. He continued his arc, checked his HUD, and locked his armor again. Jorge saw the gray-armored Spartan coming down, and threw a brute at him. Victor put his knees to his chest and his feet to the brute, and the opposing forces slowed his descent. Victor tucked his limbs and chin into his chest, rolling as he hit the platform. Even with the brute to slow his fall, the heavy impact of the Spartan dislodged that area of the platforms. Victor leaped to the next section just as the first fell away, taking three brutes and several jackals with it into another nearby ravine.
Emile fired the MAC gun, and the report echoed throughout the ravine-lined canyon. A covenant cruiser exploded, and only one dropship managed to fly safely away from the wreckage. It landed, which would suggest that there were no spare troops to retrieve. Every alien on board got off the ship, and Victor was faced with a few challenges. There were two Jackal snipers, three Elites, and two squads of Grunts. Victor picked up a nearby rifle from a dead Marine, and began firing. The Grunts required only one shot to the head, but that was an entire clip. Victor reloaded with a clip from the Marine, dispatching the two Jackals, then reached for his combat knife.
It wasn't there.
Victor remembered throwing the weapon to Emile, so he reached for another clip. Once again, he came up dry. Everything had come off his person in the fall down the first ravine. He looked up, and found a spare clip flying toward his face. He snatched it out of the air, slammed it into his weapon, and saw that Carter, in a Pelican, had dropped it as he had flown over.
Plasma flew next to Victor's gray visor. He dove into a roll, dodging two more plasma bolts, and came up shooting. When he had exhausted his only clip, he dropped the DMR and charged the remaining two Elites. One dropped its plasma rifle and snatched an energy sword from its belt. Before it could be activated, though, Victor slammed into the Elite, tackling him from the platform. They fell several meters, before the Spartan landed on top of the Elite on a lower platform. He then captured the energy sword, spinning around to find the other Elite had jumped after its companion.
Victor punched the Elite in the gut, and activated the sword at the same time. The twin plasma blades shot through the Elite's gut and out its back. The creature reached for Victor's head, and managed to scratch the front of his helmet before dying. Victor sprinted up a ramp, yearning to reach Emile. He couldn't explain why, but he just wanted to be near Noble 4 for the next few minutes. When he reached the top floor, he saw Carter's Pelican crash into the ground, destroying several sections of platform and exploding. Just before it slammed into the platforms, though, Victor saw Jun, sitting in the back with his sniper rifle. Time had seemed to slow down, and Jun had raised his left hand and flipped up his middle finger. Victor stopped, and physically fell to his knees. Jun and Carter dead, in a second. Victor looked around, and saw that Jorge, Sam and Six were still alive, but Emile was still gnawing at Victor's mind. Suddenly, Victor's long-dead comms came back on.
"Spartan down! Spartan down! They're destroying-" Static. Victor, suddenly horrified, flipped to a different frequency. Screaming and static. The next three frequencies were no different, until he reached John-117's frequency.
"Linda! James! Do you read?" Victor started to panic again, but then an answer came over the frequency.
"Affirmative, Master Chief. I've got James. He just took out four Elites bare-handed!" Victor almost smiled at the thought of four of those beasts being beaten to death by James.
Almost.
"Emile!" Victor accidentally screamed the name over the comms, then quickly adjusted his comms to be able to communicate with the Noble Team. Victor then took off running.
When he reached the MAC gun, he jumped to its level, and found three Elite Zealots sneaking up on Emile.
"Watch it, Four!" Victor called, and Emile immediately spun, shotgun in hand. The first Elite was shredded by the contents of Emile's shotgun shell, and the second was cut in half by Victor's energy sword. The third Victor tried to stab, but he realized that his sword was dead. Instead, he ended up repeatedly punching the Elite, beating it to a pulp while Emile dealt with the last two. Emile didn't deal with the last two, though. The first was killed, but the second tackled Emile, leaving his shotgun to skitter off the MAC platform. Emile pulled out his kukri, but that was thrown to the ground as well. He then drew Victor's combat knife, and Victor could clearly see the filed tick marks on the side of the blade. There were eight, which was the count of how many Covenant Hunters he had killed with the blade. The Elite slapped the combat knife up into the air, and activated his energy sword.
The combat knife flipped end over end, arcing toward Victor. He leaped up, snatched it, and landed on the Elite's back. He shoved the blade under the Elite's ribs, and it made a curious sound.
"Feel that?" Victor asked. The Elite choked. "That's Carter. Jun. That middle finger? That was for you. That's all the Spartans that you've gotten killed. More importantly, though, it's the end of your life, you bastard." Victor hauled the elite into the air and threw it from the MAC platform. He looked at Emile, and was glad to see the Spartan stand. Victor sighed, accidentally keying the intercom.
"What is it, Victor?" Jorge's accent could clearly be heard. Victor dreaded the voice, for some unknown reason. He began to speak, but Jorge beat him to it. "Hold that thought, Victor. Got to deal with these Hunters." Victor stopped dead in his tracks. Jorge was about to be killed by a pair of Hunters.
"No he's not," Victor muttered. He lowered his eyes for Jun, Carter, and Emile for just a moment, but then leaped from the MAC platform, scooping up an energy sword on his way. Two Hunters were flanking Jorge, firing at him. He had dropped his gun, and fallen to the ground, locking his armor. Victor stabbed one Hunter in the back, and its shot went high, blowing off its bond brother's head. Both fell, and Victor saw that he had barely saved Jorge. Suddenly, and Elite dropped onto Jorge. Victor reached back and snatched a pistol he hadn't even known was there and emptied the clip into the Elite's head. It tumbled off of Jorge, barely missing the Spartan with its sword.
"Thanks, Spartan." Jorge stood. "Don't know how I'd have survived any of that without your help." Sam approached from the side, MJOLNIR armor drenched in purple and blue blood, scratched, charred, and dented, but the man himself seemed unharmed. Noble Six approached from behind Victor, reclaiming his pistol, and picked up the Elite's energy sword. Emile approached as well, having retrieved his shotgun. At that moment, a Pelican landed in front of them. Out stepped Carter, Jun, and a light-blue armored female Spartan.
"Kat!" Noble Six spoke for the first time. "How did you survive? Any of you?"
"Well..." Kat said...
Kat opened her eyes. She was badly wounded, that was for sure. She had lost blood, but the wound seemed to have been closed. Or perhaps, if it was plasma, cauterized on impact. She stood, and found that, although she hadn't done it, her helmet had been discarded to one side. She picked it up, and only then did she realize she was on a Covenant dropship. Even as she put on her helmet, she heard the warbles and growls of approaching Elites. One had a translator.
"Do you think it's awake, yet?" The other one responded, but hadn't his own translator. Then the first one spoke again. "I hope so. Then I can get to the interrogation." Kat snuck around to a position next to the door, and waited for the Elites to get to her cell. They obviously didn't know the capabilities of a Spartan, for she hadn't been restrained in any way. The Elites reached her cell, and one opened the hard light door.
"Well,-!" Kat slammed her robotic right fist into the Elite's gut, and snatched his plasma pistol away from his side. With it, she shot the other Elite in the face several times, killing him. She then pivoted, smashed her non-robotic left arm into the nape of the first Elite's neck and killed him via severed spinal cord. Kat then took the second Elite's plasma repeater and snuck from the cell. As soon as she had left, she killed a pair of Grunts. Once she had killed them, she found that she had been held just behind the unloading area for troops. One side opened and troops poured out. The other side wasn't open, though, and she killed the line of Covenant soldiers waiting there. Once they were dead, she hopped to the area as it folded out, and jumped to the ground. She had to kill a few Covenant soldiers on the ground, but then hopped into a Pelican and took off.
Carter knew his Pelican was going down. He saw Victor in a melee skirmish with two Elites, saw Jun give the Covenant a middle finger, and dove back into the back of the Pelican. He dropped a bubble shield, but the fire would soon consume it. So, Carter grabbed Jun's arm, and pulled him through the inferno. As soon as they were out, they found themselves falling down the ravine. Suddenly, they landed on top of another Pelican as it flew under their wrecked one. And in the cockpit was Kat.
"How'd you get out of that explosion again?" Victor asked. Carter looked at him.
"A bubble shield and some thrusters." Their comms kicked on.
"This is Kelly, here with Fred. I need assistance at 045 and 371, over." Victor checked their own coordinates.
"That's just west of here." With unspoken consent, the group piled into the Pelican and Kat took off toward the west.
A few minutes later, the Pelican touched down. Two columns of four Spartans filed off, immediately destroying the Covenant force that had cornered Kelly and Fred. The two Spartans emerged from behind some Covenant cargo containers and approached.
"My thanks," Kelly said. "If you didn't come, I'd-" A shadow fell across the group. There was a large Covenant fleet above them.
"We've got to get off Reach." Noble Six said. "They're about to glass it." The ten Spartans immediately boarded the Pelican, and flew off at top speed toward the sky. Just as they passed by the Covenant fleet, it fired. Reach was utterly destroyed, killing off all but the ten Spartans in the Pelican. And, Victor suddenly thought, John. Eleven Spartans left, and one thought he was alone.
When the Covenant was finished destroying Reach, a slip-space rupture appeared. The entire fleet passed through, and, much to the Spartans' surprise, Pillar of Autumn. Carter turned and fired all rear thrusters on the drop-ship, propelling it toward the rupture.
"What are you doing?" Kat asked. "Pelicans can't survive slip-space."
"Yes they can." Carter muttered, seemingly just to reassure himself. They hit the rupture, and the ship lost all power. Nothing would work, and the controls shorted out. When the emerged from slip-space, they began drifting.
Everyone went silent with dread. Ten Spartans survived on mostly luck, and now they would die of starvation and thirst before they could even do anything. Suddenly, Pillar of Autumn smashed into them, pushing the Pelican forward. The Spartans looked through the cockpit window and saw a ring. It was larger than most human-inhabited planets in diameter, and had earth-like environments on the inside. Outside was all metal.
"Well, only thing we can do until Autumn gets her power back is sleep." Victor looked around, and fell right over, falling asleep immediately.
"Let's go, Spartans!" Victor awakened for the second time. Pillar of Autumn had crashed on the Halo, as the Spartans had taken to calling it, but the Pelican had continued forward. It was now very far from the larger ship. They had had a Warthog on the bottom of their Pelican, and started driving. The ten Spartans took turns sleeping, and had been traveling across the Halo for a week now, looking for any sign of UNSC life. They hadn't found any life, even Covenant. Now, it seemed, Kat had found something. "Those are UNSC tents on that butte! Let's go!" Victor stood, once again wondering how ten Spartans could fit on just one Warthog. Four were flanking the turret, which Victor was now on, and two were in the seats. The other three had positioned themselves on the back bumper, but they should have been too heavy for the 'Hog to even move. Somehow, though, it moved, and quickly.
When the 'Hog reached the butte, they immediately started up the spiral trail on the outside. When they reached the top, they were pointed to the commanding officer's structure by a wide-eyed Marine. They reached the structure and waited, hearing voices on the inside.
"...Charles Darwin? No, probably not, because he never went to war. Darwin was a naturalist who proposed a theory called 'natural selection.' Simply put, he believed that those species best equipped to survive would do so, while other, less effective organisms would eventually die out.
"That's what happened to the Spartans, Chief: They died out. Or will, once you're gone. And that's where the ODST comes in." Victor recognized the name. The ODST were a group of hardcore Marines that dropped into battle in pods and, as they would put it, 'gave 'em hell.' That had earned them the nickname 'Helljumpers.' The commanding officer continued to speak. "It was the Helljumpers who took this butte, son. Not a bunch of augmented freaks dressed in fancy armor."
Emile's anger boiled over. Victor whispered to himself. "Oh, no," as the skull-visored Spartan pushed open the door.
"...dressed in fancy armor." The Chief remembered Linda, James, and all the rest of the seventy-three boys and girls with whom he had learned to fight. All dead, all labeled as "freaks," all dismissed as having been part of a failed experiment. He took a deep breath, and was about to put Major Silva in his place, when someone barged in.
"What is the meaning-" Silva started, then blanched. John didn't spin around, though, as the Major hadn't said, "at ease," yet.
"Freaks, are we?" John hadn't heard that voice since... he couldn't remember. The next voice was just as frustratingly familiar.
"Dead, are we?" The next words spoken made John finally turn. "Do you remember dying, Kelly?" John's normally stone-cold face broke into a relieved grin. Kelly. The girl he had trained with, fought with, lost Sam with. Then, John realized that the second voice was Sam's. When he turned, he saw ten Spartans standing inside the door. He knew all of them by name, thought of them as family. Victor, the marksman, or specialist, or... John never knew what Victor did. Carter, Kat, Jun, Emile, Jorge, and Alex, the whole Noble Team; Sam, Kelly, his closest friends of the group. And Fred, the one who hadn't hesitated to become John's friend after Sam had gone. But then, John thought, Sam hadn't really gone, but had survived somehow.
"No," Kelly said, "I don't remember dying. But if I did, I certainly didn't go to heaven."
"I'm sorry, Spartans. But the truth is-" Silva tried to speak. Victor couldn't have that.
"No, sir, you're not sorry. And the truth is that we survived as Reach got glassed. I wouldn't call that a failure. Would you?" Silva nodded.
"I would. Eleven out of seventy-three is a failure. When we push the Covenant back, which I sincerely believe that we will, that victory will be the result of work by men and women like Lieutenant McKay. Human beings who are razor-sharp, metal-tough, and green to the core. Do you read me?" The ten newcomers remembered that Silva outranked them. Just as quickly, they remembered that they didn't care.
They all, including John, took a deep breath, looked straight ahead, and thundered, "Sir, no sir!" in perfect unison. The Major leaned physically away from the sound, and when he leaned back, silence took over, even outside. Finally, Silva realized that these eleven Spartans could easily assume command at any time.
"I understand. I'll admit, I would be as angry as you if most of the human race were extinct, and dismissed as freaks. I suppose there's nothing I can do. We should get to rescuing Keyes." As one, the eleven Spartans took a knee, and John sat in a chair.
It was time to destroy the Covenant.