Authors Notes: I do not own any Halo characters, weapons, vehicles and so on and so forth. The next three to four chapters will be a little background on some of the characters.
March of Skeletons
Cryo-sleep still had its dreams. For Master Chief John-117 they were horrible. Sleep was the only place where he could not ignore the pain. Blackness and flashes of horrible events passed through the Chief's vision.
Sergeant Johnson's last words' "Don't let her go, Chief... don't ever... let her go... Send me out... with a bang..." The first encounter with the flood. Murdering Captain Keyes and seeing his daughter lay dead in the arms of Johnson. Leaving Cortana on High Charity.
More and more of these visions passed through the Chief's eyes. In his suit his eyes were squeezed tight trying to rid himself of the memories. He tried o move in the cryo-chamber but he was to frozen. He wanted out of the cryo-chamber, out of the war, the death, the suffering, the never ending march of his skeletons in the closet. He subconsciously knew that Cortana would wake him if he was needed but, until then his skeletons would just keep marching in...
Cortana awakened once again. She did it every month to make sure she could and to check the more fragile systems of the ship. Today appeared no different. She thought to herself, "Neither one of us is going to make it out of here alive with the away its going." It had been two months since the Ark, the new Halo, and the portal were destroyed. Two months since the beacon, and still no response. Only a month through since they had begun orbiting around a seemingly dead planet. Only once did it light up. It was during a sunrise and Cortana could not make out much because of the distance. In four minutes three seconds it was bound to light up again. This time Cortana would see the planet.
A little over four minutes later the planet lit up. Fifteen seconds later the light was gone. However it left something new, a smooth black shape that looked like a Longsword class fighter. As it came closer Cortana realized that it was in fact a Longsword. She quickly started the heat up process on the Chief's cryo-chamber. She stared at the chamber as the Chief emerged from the chamber. A look of joy and worry were on her purple face. "Chief, Longsword inbound. Prepare for contacts." Cortana said this with worry in her voice, all she could think of was the Flood with a slipspace capable Longsword. As Cortana was thinking this a message notification appeared. She realized it was there when it beeped at her. She quickly opened it. Suddenly an chilling voice spoke threw the AI pedestal speakers. "We are not the flood. We are SPARTANs, just like you Chief. We all were sent after a prophet. While many of us died at Reach or other locations we survived. We escaped Reach through a Forerunner artifact and ended up here. There are ten of us, eleven are needed. Join us John for all of us must return to Earth to once again protect it." As this was playing the Chief and Cortana were stunned, staring speechless at the speakers, unaware that the Longsword was about to dock with the aft half of the Forward Unto Dawn. Finally the Longsword docked and both ships shuddered. The Chief and Cortana both face the hole in the Dawn now occupied by the Longsword. The Longsword's loading ramp came down reveling a SPARTAN clad in all black MJOLNIR VI suit. "So." the SPARTAN said in a calming female voice, "Care to join us." She motioned for John to follow her. John turned around, ejected Cortana and made his way into the Longsword.