Chapter One

Spartan Jones, somewhere in the Equestrian countryside. 1428 Hours, May 01, 2553 (Military Calendar/Local Time)

'I tally one, two, three, four, five and… six?'

'Seven. There's another Innie on top of the café looking building. I think he's some kind of overwatch.'

'Oh, yeah. Yeah, looks like he's got a rifle. So, seven Innies and- what was Doug's count?'

'Thirty Birdies, give or take.'

'Thirty Birdies. Call it an even forty in total, three to one in favour of the baddies?'

'Yeah, sounds reasonable enough. Town that small? Forty is more than you'd need.'

Jones nodded his head in affirmation of his assessment, lazily panning the scope of his rifle across the town once more to make doubly sure there wasn't anybody he'd missed. He hadn't so he took his eye from the scope and let it rest for a moment. Beside him, Erin kept her binoculars fixated on the small town a few kilometres from their current position.

The two of them, plus Doug who was keeping watch over their little encampment, were currently deep within enemy territory as part of a reconnaissance mission ahead of a reclamation campaign by the bulk of the UNSC's ground forces. It had been three days since a Pelican had dropped the three of them, plus an equal number of Mongooses, in a secluded part of the Equestrian countryside to learn all they could about the positions of the Insurrectionist forces currently laying claim to the land.

With almost five-hundred thousand square miles of land to occupy but only a limited amount of troops, the Innies could take control of just a select few locations, which meant the UNSC had to carefully appraise as many as they could to know where to send their equally limited troops.

To that end, the UNSC had deployed over a hundred of its best recon teams that knew how to cover a lot of ground in as short a time as possible without leaving a trail, plucking them from the Marines, ODSTs and Spartans, and inserting them all across Equestria to root out the Insurrection.

Jones, Erin and Doug belonged to the last group, the Spartans, having been selected to join the supersoldier program's latest iteration shortly after the Battle of Earth concluded in early December of last year. All three were former Army personnel, specifically its airborne division, with no less than four years combat experience under their belts, including the Fall of Reach which had been one of humanity's biggest losses throughout the entire war.

Certainly that conflict had left a deep impression on their parent formation, the 82nd Airborne Division which could trace its lineage all the way back to 1917, mauling the once 15,000 strong unit to maybe half that, whilst the Covenant's invasion of Earth had reduced that number by half again. Less than three-thousand paratroopers remained and that included replacements and mergers with even worse off groups, and it was out of those three-thousand battered and weary troops that an enigmatic individual known only as Jun had determined Jones, Erin and Doug to be ideal candidates for the Spartan-IV program.

Specifically, he was looking for recruits with an extensive background in airborne operations who also held exemplary combat records. Having lived through a living hell not once but twice in the span of five months, Jun believed them to be just what he wanted for his growing force of supersoldiers to be.

With barely a chance to say their goodbyes, the three paratroopers were whisked off to Mars for the augmentation procedures and then onto a space station located deep in the middle of nowhere for training, chafing under the brutal and sadistic Captain O'Day as she began breaking them down ahead of rebuilding them into something better than they were previously.

But, as there was never any rest for the wicked, Jones and his team, now calling themselves Falcon in homage to their parent regiment and decked out in the GEN2 Air Assault MJOLNIR armour, were amongst the hundred or so Spartan-IVs sent to Faustia to liberate the natives from an Insurrectionist occupation.

The deployment was so sudden that it interrupted their training, and while Jones desperately wanted to finish it he relished a chance to take a break from Captain O'Day's downright abusive treatment of them all, even if that meant jumping into combat.

As he lay in a small depression atop a hill, rifle tucked against his shoulder, it occurred to Jones neither he nor his team had actually gotten a chance to properly relax after the end of the Battle of Earth. There'd been the occasional day here and there where they did nothing, or had a reduced workload, but nothing of any significant downtime. This even included the weeks when doctors and scientists re-engineered his body to beyond the peak of human physical prowess. If he wasn't unconscious during surgeries then he was undergoing tests to make sure the augmentations were accepted. He hadn't even gotten any respite during the slipspace journey here because the Spartan-IV program had provided suitable materials to keep its budding troops occupied and up to date on their training.

Being here and observing the Equestrian town was actually the most peaceful it had been in several months. There was no hum from a ship's reactor, or the hustle and bustle of several hundred people crammed into a metal box a klick or so long, or the booming whump of explosions as genocidal aliens went to town on the place.

All Jones could really here was the whisper of wind, the call of far off birds, and nothing else. Equestria lacked the major development of most human colony worlds so there were no ten lane highways or maglev trains or ships flying high overhead to generate noise, and most of the ten million ponies who lived here had fled westward at the behest of SPARTAN-A196 and the rulers of the land, leaving massive tracts of land devoid of life. At least, sentient life.

Almost.

From his vantage point, Jones could see maybe two or three times as many ponies as there were Innies and griffins in town, meekly going about their business under the watchful and wary eyes of their invaders. Being occupied was as alien a concept to the Equestrians as their new overlords were, as was armed conflict on this scale judging by the briefing packet Jones had read before deploying.

The closest Equestria got to a standing army was a semi-ceremonial Royal Guard that mostly concerned itself with the goings on of the rulers, whilst the bulk of their defence rested squarely on the shoulders of six ponies who used friendship to defeat powerful beings and restore balance to the world. When he'd first read that, Jones could have sworn it was a misprint or typo and said as such to the briefing officer, but the ONI spook had simply confirmed the information before carrying on with more important things that would be of greater concern to the Spartans.

It took being invaded and the assistance of SPARTAN-A196 to marshal any kind of army intended for conducting offensive manoeuvres rather than reactive, defensive ones, but even then it had limited successes against the Innies and the griffins. The Equestrians lacked both the arms and armour to face off against such a numerically superior force, and the resolve to kill the enemy, which led to their first outing being their last.

Now all they had left was a smattering of both the Royal Guard and their army, totalling perhaps less than three-hundred souls all told, which was why they had so readily accepted the appearance of a UNSC battlegroup in high orbit and nearly two division's worth of troops. They might have been less pleased to know that both the ships and soldiers were hastily cobbled together from what remained of the Home Fleet after the Covenant tore through it.

Some ships still had whole sections of armour in need of replacement, or had a skeleton crew manning them, or were so fresh out of dry dock that more than half the furnishings inside had yet to be installed. Similarly, the Marine and ODST units were mergers of larger formations mauled by the Covenant or consisted of troops fresh from boot camp. A lot of the UNSC's time here on Faustia would be spent continuing the work that had gotten interrupted by the Equestrian's call for help.

It was strange how much effort HIGHCOM was putting into saving the inhabitants of a planet they hadn't known about until three or four months ago, doubly so given the disorganised state of the UNSC's forces at the time and the other, more pressing matters to attend. Part of Jones wondered if some of the reasoning was to use Equestria as a testing ground for some of their new toys, particularly the newly minted Spartan-IVs given almost two-thirds of their number were here rather than elsewhere. The recon teams were certainly getting put through the ringer because they had twice as many towns to look over than their Marine and ODST counterparts in the same amount of time. Since getting dropped off, Fireteam Falcon had cast their gaze over no less than seven towns in three days whilst getting no more than two hours sleep a day.

A mixture of coffee, stimulants, professionalism and their augmented physiques was just about the only thing keeping the three Spartans from dropping where they stood, and a quick check of their mission objectives told Jones that wasn't about to change any time soon.

'Kinda weird how passive they're being about being occupied,' Erin said. 'I mean, if this was us or the Elites, and definitely the Brutes, there'd be rioting in the streets almost constantly.'

'There has to be some kind of balance,' Jones said, returning to his scope. 'You've got so many proud warrior races in the galaxy that there needs to be a proud pacifist race to counter them. I mean, seriously. Friendship is their primary means of fighting off bad guys?'

'Technically speaking, Joe, but don't we use friendship to do the exact same thing?' Erin said. 'Teamwork and unit cohesion only work if you like the guy you're standing next to, and that's basically another form of friendship. Right?'

'I guess,' Jones said. 'But our kind of friendship doesn't make- what did the packet say? Some kind of rainbow?'

'Yeah,' Erin said. 'Yeah, a rainbow of energy that can purify someone, or turn them to stone, or banish them to the moon, or something else out of a little kid's cartoon.'

'Rainbows,' Jones snorted. 'Christ.'

He panned his scope around again in search of anything of note for the Marines that would soon be upon the town, but saw nothing of any major concern. If anything, he got the impression the Innies would soon be bugging out to leave the town alone. They kept huddling together and looking westward, pointing occasionally and up to the sky, as though expecting a massive mechanised UNSC formation to come roaring over the horizon straight for them or for a platoon of ODSTs to hot drop right into their midst.

It was to be expected since the force they'd sent to Vanhoover had gone silent a little less than a week ago after reporting the arrival of a massive UNSC fleet and army, plus dozens upon dozens of Spartans, so naturally they'd be worried about what was going on along Equestria's western coast. More than once some of them had made gestures pointing east to Baltimare, the Insurrection's main foothold in the country, as though suggesting they retreat there to perceived safety. Some of the smaller garrisons already had, leaving behind Equestrians who were bewildered at the sudden change in their circumstances. Might these troops abandon their posts too?

'How far to our next objective?' Jones asked.

'Uh, about seventy or eighty klicks,' Erin said. 'Command wants us there by 1900 hours.'

'And it's half past two now,' Jones murmured, pulling up a topographical map of Equestria the navy had been kind enough to create and distribute. He flagged their current position and where they needed to be next, and drew a line between them before scanning the terrain, wincing when he did.

The land they were in now was mostly made up of rolling hills, providing plenty of cover for the three of them on their Mongooses, but it soon petered out into a massive, oblong shaped plain that looked like it could have once been an inland sea or lake before the water levels dropped, stretching between the two towns almost perfectly with a hardpan road connecting them. At its widest, the plain measured more than thirty klicks across with hills and forests running along the edges

Given the road was flat and level and dry, Falcon could move between the two settlements in just under ninety minutes at top speed but at a cost of kicking up a massive plume of dust that could be seen beyond the visible horizon, and if there were Innies guarding the next town they might have sentries posted to keep an eye on the road for any potential hostiles using it. If they saw the dust then they'd shift to an alert state and get themselves ready for incoming hostiles, complicating Falcon's job.

They could skirt the edges but some quick calculations told Jones that distance was close to 250 kilometres and would take them over rougher terrain, hampering forward progress, and make them miss their arrival time, which was wholly unacceptable. If the higher ups wanted them in place no later than 1900 hours, they wanted them in place no later than 1900 hours. There was little to no leeway with them, especially when it came to Spartans. They accomplished the impossible, or as close to it as they could.

It was obvious the truncated timeframe was part of their assessment to see if they could hack it as Spartans, and perhaps more personally it was a test of Jones' quick thinking and problem solving skills whilst under pressure. He certainly felt it as he scanned over the map again. If they went one route, they risked being seen by the very people they were going to observe, and if they went the other they risked failing to adhere to their schedule and cast doubt on their perceived superiority, and there was no doubt in Jones' mind that piece of information would find its way back to Captain O'Day's ear.

He flinched upon imagining the immense dressing down she'd lay upon him and the rest of Fireteam Falcon, and endeavoured to find a solution to the problem before him. The town they were aiming for actually sat on the edge of the plain rather than within the hills behind it, so they'd have to circle around it to get a good observation point, but it also meant the Innies would have a clear view of anything coming towards them from across the flat land. Judging by the imagery, the tallest building in town was roughly four stories high and likely the best place for an observer to perch themselves, giving them a horizon of twelve kilometres.

With that in mind, Jones realised they could actually use the road for the first fifty or so klicks before needing to worry about anyone in town seeing them or their dust cloud. Once they were close enough, Falcon could then veer off the beaten path and go cross country to hug the edge of the plain where the terrain became hilly enough to keep them from being silhouetted against the horizon and the ground became grassy enough that they wouldn't kick up too much dust, if any.

His only worry, however brief, was that the Innies could have placed remote sensor beacons along the road that would send alerts to anyone listening that someone or something was barrelling down it towards them at high speeds. It was something the UNSC might have done if they were locking down a location but then, they had a bigger budget than the rebels to pay for such gizmos and the Innies would more than likely be expecting their adversaries to come at them from the air in fleets of Pelicans and Hornets, not a small ground recon team.

After all, the UNSC Navy ruled the skies now and could train the powerful optics of their warships down onto just about anything they wished to. It was a moot point to spend time and energy deploying an early warning system along a single stretch of road when the enemy could look down at them from the high heavens with impunity.

'Yeah, that'll work,' Jones muttered to himself, roughing out the various turning points and timings on his map before beaming a copy to Doug and Erin. 'It's got to work.'

His two teammates agreed and were quick to break camp when the allotted time came, collecting up all the rubbish they had generated and clearing away their tracks as best they could before mounting up and moving out.

Spartan Jones, somewhere in the Equestrian countryside. 1915 Hours, May 01, 2553 (Military Calendar/Local Time)

They managed to get to their observation point with minutes to spare, stashing the Mongooses in a small hollow and draping camouflaged netting over them, and were quick to train their optics onto the town below. Like the one before it, their target was a typical Equestrian settlement with wattle and daub buildings that never rose above two stories barring the central government structure, which was closer to four stories, with the streets that ran between them made of well trodden dirt rather than stone or tarmac.

It too had an Insurrectionist presence in the form of humans wandering around with outdated and mismatched armour systems, and like their comrades in the previous town they too were anxious about recent developments. They couldn't help but glance west every few minutes or gaze skyward with dread on their faces, and their new disposition hadn't gone unnoticed by the townsfolk who would scurry past the armed humans and then, once they were out of sight and earshot, whisper amongst themselves with a fervour Jones had only ever seen in people getting ready to do something bold that went against common sense, and he mentioned as much to Doug.

'Yep,' he said. 'I think they're probably planning on some sort of uprising. Don't you?'

'Maybe,' Jones said with a shrug. 'Kinda goes against their whole philosophy though.'

'Maybe they're realising friendship isn't always magic,' Doug said. 'Besides, you can only push a person so far before they shove back. It's the same for us, innit?'

'Innit just,' Jones agreed, a wry smile on his face as Doug chuckled at his use of the other Spartan's colloquialism. 'The problem is, they just don't have the proper means of staging an uprising against the Innies, or the Birdies. Inspired revolutionaries or not, people without guns typical don't fare well against those that do.'

'Yeah,' Doug said in agreement. Then, after a brief pause, said, 'Why do we call them Birdies?'

'What?' Jones said.

'The griffins. Why do we call them Birdies? Shouldn't it be like with the Innies where we call them Griffies or something?'

'I don't know. I heard some guy call them Birdies and he probably heard it off some other guy, and so on and so forth. You know how it is.'

'Yeah,' Doug said. 'But why Birdie? Isn't that a golf term for a score one below par?'

'I think so,' Jones said with a shrug. 'I don't know. Maybe... Maybe the person who first coined it thought the griffins were only slightly above average or something. I mean, they are playing second fiddle to the Innies.'

Doug dipped his head in agreement, but then came out with, 'Why not Eagles?'

'What do you mean, why not Eagles?' Jones asked.

'As a nickname,' Doug said. 'Griffins are part eagle, are they not? And eagle is a golf term for two below par, innit?'

'I...' Jones began. 'I don't know. Maybe the guy wasn't well versed in mythology or golfing, or he thought giving them the name Eagles put them in too much of a heroic light after what they've done, or he just laughed at a picture of them and said something like pretty birdie, and someone close to him just ran with it.'

'Hmm, maybe,' Doug said. 'Still, though. Birdies?'

Jones sighed in exasperation and let his head sag forward theatrically. One of Doug's perhaps less redeeming traits was his ability to lock onto a mostly trivial thought or custom and stay locked onto it, whirling it about inside his head as he tried to discern the secrets and motivations behind it and asking those around him for their thoughts on the matter. If he had nothing overly important to occupy his attention, like being in the thick of battle, or if he was running on minimal sleep, then it only amplified his need to talk about it out loud.

Being stuck on overwatch with Jones apparently didn't qualify as enough to occupy his mind, partly because the Innies and Birdies in town were just patrolling, and mostly because Jones was the one to have his scope glued to the town. Sometimes carrying a DMR and being the team leader brought with it powerful downsides.

'Birdies,' Jones repeated softly as he peered through his scope again. 'Birdies, Birdies, Birdies.'

'Yeah,' Doug said. 'Hey, that would make any griffins flying above us in a holding pattern circling birdies, wouldn't it?'

'Yep,' Jones said. 'That it would.'

They lapsed into silence after that, staring at the town with half lidded eyes caused by improper sleep, Jones with his rifle tucked against his shoulder and one eye on the scope, and Doug with his arms resting on the berm they were lying behind and his chin resting on those. He could have fallen asleep for all Jones knew, his facial expression completely hidden behind the mirrored visor of his helmet, but as absent minded as Doug could be he was still a professional and wouldn't fall asleep without getting some relief in place first.

'Anything interesting happening?' he asked several long minutes into the silence.

'Use your binoculars,' Jones said.

'They're all the way by my hip,' Doug said. 'That's too far to reach.'

'No it's not.'

'No it's not. But it means moving my arms and I've just gotten comfortable.'

'Use your binoculars, Doug.'

'I'm too comfortable, Joe.'

A soft sigh slipped past Jones' lips but they were still drawn into a faint smile at the back and forth he and Doug were having. As much as his team annoyed him sometimes, Doug with his left field questions and Erin with her tendency to get overly hyperactive once the adrenaline started pumping, there was nobody else Jones would rather be fighting side by side with. The bonds the three of them shared ran deep, forged from the heat and intensity of four years hard fighting against the Covenant, so much so that Jones didn't think of them as his friends so much as he thought of them as family, which was in especially short supply following the deaths of his parents back on Reach.

He would die for them, and they would for him, and he couldn't help but wonder how their camaraderie stacked up against the kind of friendship Equestria called upon to defend it from threats. Or, at least it had done until three of the six ponies found themselves on the wrong end of a Pelican's weaponry.

Jones shook his head gently to clear the thought from his head and returned to the town, panning from one Innie soldier to another with the occasional twitch to a griffin to break up the monotony. Unlike their human compatriots, the half lion/half eagle creatures had a more uniform look about them with official looking armour made of pressed metal and ordained with a heraldic device that must have been the Griffin Kingdom's coat of arms. It looked like two griffins back to back, standing up on their hind legs and raising their talons against an unseen enemy, wings outstretched and tails entwined, as though perhaps extolling the griffins could only count on griffins when their backs were against the wall, or that even when cornered they didn't back down from a fight.

That was a sentiment Jones could easily get behind, full well believing that so long as he had the ability to stand and hold a weapon he wouldn't quit, regardless of the odds. The question on his mind now was if the griffins believed this themselves, as judging by the uncertain looks they sported they weren't looking forward to fighting the UNSC any more than the Insurrectionists did. Would they stand shoulder to shoulder against a company of Marines, dying to the last, or would they flee to live another day?

Won't know until we take the fight to them, Jones thought as he tracked a trio of griffins walking down a street, all three of them doing their best to appear haughty despite their fears and the glowering looks the Equestrians were giving them. Evidently their attempts were fooling nobody and the ponies of this town were beginning to develop a bold streak. Jones rechecked the numbers in his head at how successful a revolution might be for the ponies should they try anything, and came up short. The Innies might have been outnumbered more than three to one but they still had guns, and a willingness to kill, whilst all the Equestrians had was hope.

That was all well and good for starting rebellions but people needed arms and ammunition to carry it through to the end. Hopefully the Marines could get here before the Equestrians launched any such futile attempt, but Jones was too much of a pessimist to think they would. The sigh he let out wasn't one of amusement, it was one of exasperation and frustration at knowing these ponies could be lying dead in the streets by the time the UNSC swung by to save them.

'Hey, Joe?' Doug said.

'Yeah, Doug?' Jones said.

'You remember when we got sent to Shadow to train their militia?'

'Yes, Doug. I remember it.'

'And how they had that big party to send us off?'

'I remember most of that.'

'Why were some people juggling geese?'