A Soldier's Tale: The Rainforest Wars

by RiptideZ

In the 2160s, there was a war that was unparalleled by everything that had come before it. It lead to the end of the Modern Age and the signed the death note of Nations. The Interplanetary War was the birthright of the UNSC, and along the way, Captain Jeremiah Mendez documented his part of the conflict. Inspired by the military classic mentioned in Ghosts of Onyx.

1. Chapter One: An End to War

Welcome to The Rainforest Wars, a fanfiction adaptation of an in-universe novel from the Halo series, A Soldier's Tale: The Rainforest Wars by Captain Jeremiah Mendez. This is a personal tale set during the 2162 conflict, centuries before the Covenant War and the UNSC. This story is not about the future, but rather the unity of Humankind and the creation of the UEG and later the UNSC. This book was popularized by the events of the Halo novel: Ghosts of Onyx. It's a good read, I suggest reading it.

Anyhow, please read and review. I'm sorry to my old readers for not updating for a long time. I've been busy with newer projects and my personal life. This is the reboot, I won't do the full novel but I'll try to focus on the important parts of what I think this novel was about. Thank you for reading. In the future, expect some collaboration with other authors. I will inform you when chapters are written by others rather than me.

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Welcome to "A Soldier's Tale: The Rainforest Wars," a non-profit fan-produced fiction product under the ownership of set penname: RiptideZ.

DISCLAIMER: All intellectual property revealed in this work belongs to their rightful owner(s). RiptideZ, the author, owns only that of his intellectual assets. Please Read and Critique constructively via private messaging or review.

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["Chapter One: An End to War"]

[CPT Jeremiah D. Mendez (URNA Army, O-3)]

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I remember the war like it was yesterday, and maybe in fact it was yesterday.

In all the two years that followed that conflict, I have focused on the one tale that has kept me motivated on telling this story. I remember it vividly like it was yesterday. It may have to do with the fact that I kept waking every night with the memory in mind after watching hours of battle footage roll through my dreams. I remember it and I can't forget, the battles or the people. The war is always with me; it forces me to remember but the memory lacks one defining part. It lacks truth for others to learn. Those who do not understand and cannot comprehend the lessons learned are doomed to repeat the same mistakes that the previous generation had committed.

It isn't the battles or the death that motivates me, but the story and the history; the way we remember the truth is the most important aspect of war. I am motivated by my memory to spread the truth so that others can know and understand why we fought. We all of Mankind's fighting has happened over and over again.

See, before the conflict, I had been a teacher. A history professor of an online institute in Seattle, Washington even though I was a Brooklyn boy. It is my nature to need to remember history, because I've lived with and within it all my life. I need to be able to express it now however because I have become a part of that history and a part of that truth and before the truth becomes muddled in rumor and controversy, I need to set the record straight. Before it goes stale and out of everyone's minds.

The final day of the Rainforest Wars, the Western War, the Amazonian Conflict; by whatever name that conflict is referred to by, I personally prefer to call it an opening to the next era of history. The end of the Rainforest Wars are a new chapter in the life of Humankind. Wars tend to end and begin eras; to me it's rather strange but I don't think I have the energy to write a master thesis about that. I'm sure I've written too many of those in my lifetime.

There is something about war that seems absolute and definite and yet the beginning of something new. I was never a supporter for conflict, nor was I a supporter of fighting. Personally, when the kids would get into fights at the Brooklyn school where I actually taught, I never cared who started it or who threw the first punch or who got hurt worse. I sent them both off to detention because it was violent no matter the situation.

War instead made me into a fighter, made me a soldier. I was no volunteer in the conflict, rather I was a reservist with the strict goal of avoiding the battlefield at any cost. At this point, I think I understand why my colleagues always told me to go Navy. The National Guard, even if it's not the forward deployment force, they will definitely see conflict, if war does occur.

For a history professor, it was a stupid mistake; I should have looked back to every conflict the United States had ever fought and understand that the National Guard is still a part of an Army and therefore a part of war by extension. The Rainforest Wars was a conflict that reintroduced the draft after three decades of an all-volunteer force.

I was no fan of war, but I loved and still do love history and I think those two subjects, even for how much I try to separate the two, go hand and hand. Just like the way we as people love to separate politics from religion and yet they intertwine all the time.

I am telling the story of the war that turned me into a soldier. This is a tale shared by all warfighters of all nations, and yet it is a single tale told by a single man. I remember the final day of the Rainforest Wars and while a day of peace it has made me remember war ever since. It has made me, I'm not sure whether true or not, but I sort of miss war. I have a need to go back and see the conflict, to feel the terror and adrenaline and excitement of pounding shells, exploding bombs, and mad gunfire.

It has never left me and I'm not sure it ever will.

On the final day of the conflict, as the ceasefire was being negotiated off in distant Rio, I had found myself in Sao Luis at a small restaurant. It was built out of a bombed out McDonald's, a relic from the coup that followed the rise of fascists in Brazil.

The crooked roof had peeling gray paint all along its surface. Some of the remaining windows were littered with spider web cracks, and even years after the coup, the ground outside was still littered with dust and dirt kicked up by looters and makeshift hand grenades.

The Marines had been occupying the town and the insurgents in the town had long been uprooted from their hiding places; rather it's a good thing when the city's population favored the occupiers rather than their own fighters. It made transition and defense of the population centers so much easier.

Anyhow, I had been given leave from keeping my men from invading a bowling alley in one of the more dingy parts of town, near the slums with all the nightclubs and prostitution rings.

When I walked in, I had pretty much expected there to be nobody within given the dusted windows made it difficult to see inside. To my surprise, a family had set up a mom-and-pop shop in the abandoned building and had managed to repower the old solar panel array and the building's electric generator.

They didn't have soda or any burgers, sure, but they made up with their own local traditions and delicacies. The Latino food had been grafted from what seemed to be house grown crops, what little the local agrarian sector could provide, and the relief supplies brought in by the URNA's logistics.

There were a few Brazilian families sitting around talking in hushed voices. They didn't seem in any hurry to leave for anywhere and they did not seem interested in the American that had walked in without much of a care. The appearance of white men in military gear in your village deeper in the Amazon often created quite the scare, but here, in one of the major cities, it wasn't really anything special.

For many, I was just another customer of the day. When you've seen so many impoverished or agrarian societies burn down their own villages or pick up and leave on the road at the sight of our tanks and war planes, it is almost impossible to describe what a relief it felt like to see people not treat you like a plague.

I'll put it in simpler terms, it was the first time I felt tensionless around a civilian population outside North America.

I ordered my food and I took a seat in this recluse corner of the restaurant, I wasn't in any mood for company. The day had been long, tiring, and rather bland.

Setting up sandbags, doing mine clearing, and walking patrols are only exciting the first time. Then everything becomes routine; it's been routine for almost a year now.

Playing the grunt and running operation in the endless jungle and mud-caked Amazon Basin. The first time we stepped off the boat and into the rainforest in Venezuela, I had been mesmerized by the sense of scale, now it was just another dump, another place to screw over.

Like how the Marines have been referring to every place they go since the century before in Iraq. Fucking welcome to the Suck, they said. They still call it the Suck. Now it's just the Suck isn't a desert but a really muddy rainforest, truth be told, I never saw much of a difference in the two.

The food, I don't really remember what I ordered, I'm not even sure what it tasted like, but it was a while ago. I just know that the next day I was having the runs. It was still good if my memory suits me well.

I remember reading the news on my mobile phone as I sat in the bombed out McDonald's. Somehow when we took the city, we didn't screw the Internet or the electrical lines. I guess we got lucky because among other strange jobs I had to do in the past, setting up power lines had been one of them. Here was a lucky break because cutting up logs and tying wires for seventeen hours a day is not fun whatsoever.

The news beyond the Rainforest Wars on that final day was still very doom and gloom.

Conflict between UN Peacekeepers and Io rebels had broken out again overnight killing 43 civilians and 12 combatants, nine being the UN Peacekeepers and the other three rebel gunman.

China had frozen assets to some private military firm in the Gobi after they had dropped chemical weapons on some no-name village.

The Peace Talks were still going strong though there was still noticeable standoffish emotion coming from both parties between the FSAN and URNA negotiators. Things like national sovereignty and recognition, the protection of the environment, trade, acquisition of Mexico. The whole Nine Yards, it looked like the ceasefire wasn't going to end anytime soon but no one was budging on any of terms. The only thing the two governments seemed to agree on was that the war needed to end.

Plus MNDI commanders were already preparing to pack up and go home. The URNA allies from Europe and Asia had seen to their job I guess and were ready to head home. MNDI, or Mindy as it was known to the grunts, was the Multi-National Defense Initiative, a kind of successor to NATO but included more countries around the world.

The URNA was supposed to finish negotiations since it was technically our war, not that I don't like the foreigners having our backs but sometimes it feels like they just want to say they were there and then let us do all the work.

I was reading along my newsfeed when some little brat came up to me and was looking for a piece of me. Some six year old dressed in blue jeans and a dirtied white shirt. While FSAN wasn't much of a dictatorship or fascists for that matter, they weren't exactly the model society. Poor Human Rights record, a lack of civilian protections, no public representation, lack of social services, and an asymmetrical infrastructure model that only focused on large population centers rather than trying to raise the national average for the entire society.

"Hey mister!"

The Brazilian boy did not look the happiest as he scowled when I did not respond.

"Mister. Hey, I'm talking too you!"

"What do you want boy?" I remember being pretty grouchy coming off work, it doesn't exactly help when you have to run the show of a hundred something eighteen-twenty somethings all looking to get some and to go play tag with the ladies around town. The greenhorns always seem to act like ten years old. Maybe it was just me but my men weren't exactly the best behaved.

"You're a soldier? Right?"

"Yeah, I'm a soldier."

"What are you doing here?"

"Eating a sandwich. Why do you think I'm here?"

The boy looked annoyed but didn't say anything. I had a pissed off day, I wasn't in the mood to play caretaker for the kid and he ran off eventually after finding me uninteresting.

I didn't engage in a conversation with the kid but it has since struck a chord within me about the whole principle of different generations. The separation between the young and old and the disconnect that occurred between the two that eventually brought ideologies to war. Why do we never learn?

Why do our children, our kids end up repeating the same mistakes we did? We've had thousands of years to realize it and yet we continue to fail to stop war. To stop our own bloodshed.

I'm not exactly sure why we fight wars. Maybe it's a matter of species' population control; maybe it has come to a point that other natural aspects that would have kept our species at bay had failed and the only way to curtail a growing invasive human population was through the killing of ourselves, an ingrained nature-made kill switch placed into every living being. Or maybe because it's in our nature to fight; it's ironic but true that Humanity does not evolve or advance itself unless it's under some form of pressure, more often than not, a form of conflict and bloodshed. War has been a catalyst of invention for centuries and has propelled mankind farther than any other activity Humanity can implore itself in.

War created tools, fire, and metal. War created swords, guns, and gunpowder. War created explosives, created steam, created electricity. It created transportation, domestication, mass communication, etc. It has led to the automobile, wireless technologies, atomic energy, and all sorts of other technologies.

War has helped Mankind advance beyond the cave and the dark. And yet we seem to have never mastered war. Almost like it controls us.

I'm writing this tale, my own tale about what it means to be a soldier in hopes that future generations may be able to learn from our mistakes. To learn to master themselves and master war. To prevent our mistakes as we grow closer together as a species. Something will have to change for us to gain some measure of peace.

A month after I ran into the kid, another child actually motivated the individual in me to push toward trying to understand why we wage war and why I want the next generation to learn from our mistakes. My men and I had gathered at a nice Italian restaurant in the Bronx when I ran into him.

A young boy, one probably not a day over 6 had walked up to me, bravely and with a confident pounce in every step. His shoes lit up as he took a step, the red and blue lights that flashed imitating that of a police car with the expected creativity found in child's attire, he came to our table and stared me down.

He wore a white shirt with a cartoon triceratops on the print side, his small jeans hung loosely and cartoonish from his boyish frame. He had a confident air to him, one that involuntarily brought you eye to eye with this child, the boy's pair colored an innocent, electric blue that captured everything he saw.

He didn't even address me directly and childish questioned a respectful collage of war photos.

"What's that for?" He asked me.

I said nothing and continued to eat, the kids had asked this before but were often pulled away by overly concerned parents. Why this moment would be any different, I had asked myself a little too confidently.

No parent stepped forward. He just looked at me and so I turned back to him. He addressed me, "What's with your weird picture-wall?"

"It's a collage."

"Who are those people?'

"People."

"What people?"

"People I knew, people that I love."

"Why aren't they here then?"

"They're memories, how could they be here?"

"The people that care about us are always with us. No matter where ever they are, but they should also always be with you. That's what family is for. They never turn their back on you when you need them." He said frowning at my obvious disinterested retort, for a kid he sounded very sage-like, then again most kids are.

"Well, I don't need them right now. They don't need to be here."

"Well, who are they then?"

"People you don't need to know about, something of a memory from a while ago you would never understand at your age." I stated, maybe a little too harshly, but the boy remained unflinching, unrelenting, unfazed.

"Nu-uh! I'm old enough, I'm seven. I'm grown up!" His voice pouted obviously, a pair of parents in the corner of the lot at another table was staring in our direction; I assumed the boy was theirs. I ignored their stares of helplessness toward the kid. Children often have an uncanny ability to ignore authority, I could sympathize with his parents.

I simply looked at the boy dead in the eyes with a look that would have scared off even the experienced thug, a look that could have made the greenhorn in past me wet his pants. The guy first out of boot camp believing the whole world was his bitch. That kid died away after my first bout of combat.

The boy however did not falter, if he had any doubts at that second, I could not tell, I forgot how intelligent and wise a child could be, their minds full of ideas and ways of thinking I had long lost many years before.

"They were friends I lost a while ago, they're faraway now. Somewhere I will not be able to reach until my time comes."

The boy responded wisely, almost too mature for his age, yet again. "You fought in the war? Did you kill a lot of bad guys?"

Fucking sage man; I wasn't sure if he was just a sixty year old man locked in a seven year old body.

"I fought in the war. I don't consider killing a good thing kid, and I don't consider them bad people. Just misunderstood. Something I think you shouldn't worry about."

"But I'm old enough and I know a lot of things about the war!"

"How would you know?"

"Because Uncle Bobby and Dada, fought in it!"

"Oh, isn't that interesting." I looked toward the parents again who were still staring from outside the volume range of our conversation. I gave the father a mock salute, he nodded back. The man was around my buddy, Delagarza's age, about 38 or so, pretty young. I myself was heading for 50, being 48 years old.

"My grandpapa also fought in the War too; he's a special man!"

"Why is that?" I asked interested.

""He still has two arms but he can't walk, he has no legs and yet he smiles and grins like everyone else. He doesn't care if he lost his legs because he got new ones that make him stronger than anyone. His new legs are wheels, he moves faster than me and I'm the fastest kid in my school!"

"That's very cool, indeed." I said humoring the boy. It wasn't surprising, some veterans who became amputees learned to live with their loss, however, many still could not adapt. Fortunately for this boy's grandfather, it seemed he overcame his problem. "I'd like to meet him sometime maybe."

"Hey, Mr. what do you think about people, if you went to war, doesn't that make you hate the people you had to fight?" He asked quickly cutting off my train of thought.

"No, I don't hate them because they fought for what they believed in and I did the same. We were all equals and all deserve to be treated as such, there were no good guys or bad guys, everyone had their moment in that war."

"Then you like all people? Even the ones who are called evil." He asked.

"I won't say I like them, but they are all humans and will be treated as if they were people through and through."

"Well if there will always be good guys and bad guys, how will there not be another war?" He asked. "Especially if you don't like them but accept them, that doesn't mean that they will do the same for you, right?"

"You're a smart kid…, you're right, I don't know… Wait. I know why there won't be another war. Because we have people like you, who can lead everyone to do better for the future." I thought about it and I recognized that the future did not depend on me, but it depended upon the next generation to make up for our decisions. The future will depend on how they grow up and whether they do learn.

The children that will grow up not knowing the feeling of bombs being dropped over their head must be prepared to end our addiction to conflict. They have all the tools before them to rebuild and master war. All they need is a good step forward. I'm hoping that maybe in some way, this book can be a catalyst for that step in the right direction. A step toward some lasting peace, for our children and then their children and then their children. A future that we can be proud to bring our children into. A future that we can all be proud of.

This story I'm trying to tell is to end war. To bring about an End to War itself.

This is the story of one soldier and many others in the Rainforest Wars.

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Chapter 1: An End to War

Words: 3562

Franchise: Halo