Prologue
9 February 2553 Military Calendar
Aboard the UNSC Pint of No Return
Colonel John Zakaev
Colonel Zakaev wiped the sweat that was accumulating on his forehead. He let out a quiet laugh.
Am I nervous? He thought. Zakaev had fought in an ONI Section Three black ops team in ten major battles with the Covenant, received multiple medals, and he had even been promoted to Colonel a month ago; he had also been injured in four of those engagements. He ran his fingers across the plasma burn on his head, during the last battle a plasma rifle bolt had struck Zakaev's helmet, and partially melted to his head. The memories from a month spent in rehabilitation clinics.
The door to "the cage" slid apart and brought Zakaev back to the present. Three high ranking ONI officials walked into the room; Captain Gibson, Rear Admiral Rich, and Vice Admiral Parangosky. Zakaev had worked for Gibson and nodded to the captain. Gibson acknowledged him with a loud grunt, he was clearly not happy to be here. As the Vice Admiral sat down three clicks echoed throughout the room, they were now isolated from the rest of the universe. They sat in utter silence for what felt like an eternity, until the Vice Admiral broke the silence.
"Colonel John Zakaev, do you know why you were brought here," She asked.
Zakaev shook his head. "Ma'am I haven't the foggiest idea, hopefully to kill some Covenant, and not to do paperwork." He hated paperwork almost as much as the Covenant, and it kept him out of the fight for almost as long as the Covies have.
The Vice Admiral slid a document across the table to him.
"What do you know about the late Colonel Ackerson," she inquired.
He skimmed through the files contained in the document. He hesitated before he asked. "Ma'am permission to speak freely?"
"Permission granted Colonel," she said.
"The man had a great military record," he continued. "But he was a backstabbing jack ass."
The Rear Admiral downed a shot from the flask of cheap whiskey that he carried. "You got that right," he growled.
Zakaev flipped to the next page on the document, his mouth fell open at what was in front of him. He looked to the others to see if this information was true. The Vice Admiral wore an ominous grin.
"These numbers are incredible," he exclaimed. "A company taking on thousands of hostiles, it's almost as if the soldiers were…"
"Spartans," the Vice Admiral finished the sentence for him. "The documents you are looking at contain information on the Spartan-III program."
"I didn't know there was another Spartan program," he said. That's when it sank in, the secret meeting, questions about Ackerson, and his recent promotion.
He was being interviewed for a job.
"Why haven't I seen or heard of these so called Spartan-III's," he asked. "It's impossible to keep one Spartan out of the news, let alone a whole company of them."
"We kept the number of people that knew to the absolute minimum," the Rear Admiral explained. "We secretly rerouted funds from other programs, moving personnel through the back channels. Typical stuff if you're setting up a black op."
"Basically we went to great lengths to keep this a secret," Gibson said.
"How many companies have been trained," he said.
"Only three," Parangosky said. "And Gamma Company is the only survivor of the three."
Something didn't add up. "Why only three?"
Parangosky pointed at the documents. "Scroll to the next page."
Zakaev tabbed ahead. "Holy shit," he muttered under his breath. "You been sending them on suicide mission, and then the Covenant found your training facility."
"The information on that is top secret, and irrelevant to this meeting," Parangosky said. "The point is this; we're looking to start the program back up again. Are you interested in a job?"
She had finally dropped the bombshell on Zakaev.
He thought long and hard about what he would say. "What would this job entail me to do?"
"First select a new trainer to teach the next generation of Spartan-III," Gibson said. "You'll have to settle for a Spartan-III, we can't pull another Spartan off the lines. You will also manage the operations they undertake."
Zakaev listened intently as Gibson laid out the details of training the Spartan-III's. After Gibson had finished his end, the Rear Admiral spoke up.
"You'll have all the equipment you should ever need for this operation," the Rear Admiral said. "And because of the attack on our last training facility, defensive measures will be taken."
"Where would you put the training facility," Zakaev asked. "A military base?"
"No, too many people to worry about," the Rear Admiral said. "And the paperwork required moving all the non-essential personnel would take months."
Zakaev decided to try again. "How about using a dead outer colony? The only thing you have to worry about out there is slavers, traders, and a random Covenant patrol."
The Vice Admiral shook her head.
"Where else could there be," he wondered.
Parangosky tapped in several commands into the table, and a second later a brown sphere appeared in the center of the table.
"Am I going crazy or is that a ball of shit," Zakaev joked.
Parangosky ignored the comment and pressed on. "Planet T-158B," she said. "We tried to make the planet into a weapons testing facility, but was abandoned after several accidents. Swampy terrain makes ground assaults almost impossible, especially since the training facility will occupy most of the dry land."
He studied the planet for several minutes before finally speaking. "It's the perfect place to train the ultimate super soldiers," he said. "When do I start the selection process?"
The Vice Admiral grinned again. "Immediately," she told him. "The trainer candidates are on the last page of that file. Just remember the list is short, so pick wisely."
She rose from her chair. "Gentlemen the conversation we just had never leaves this room, understood."
Everyone nodded in agreement. Before Gibson went with the others, he went to Zakaevs end of the table and held out a hand. Zakaev shook the captains' hand, and then waited for him to leave.
He sat back down and skipped to the last page of the document. Out of the 300 potential candidates of Gamma Company, Parangosky only gave him three choices. After reading each profile several times, he made his decision; he selected Sonya-G032 to lead the training program. The Spartan had lost her left arm due to severe plasma burns, and had it replaced with a prosthetic limb so she could stay in the fight with her fellow Spartans.