I wrote this a long time ago - around the release of Halo 3, I think. With that in mind and considering Bungie's tendency for retconning, this story is based mostly on the Halo novels, especially The Fall of Reach and Ghosts of Onyx. A little background to the story that I'm sure I won't get around to explaining - you'll have to bear with me if I ever do. The oldest/most proficient members of the Spartan-III programme in Ghosts of Onyx were selected for further augmentation to make them equivalent to Spartan-IIs, and spread throughout UNSC forces. My protagonist (a blatant case of author-insertion if I ever saw one) is a Spartan III-X in charge of a squad of ODSTs about to enter the Trial campaign. Back in the real world, this is intended as a collaborative project with one of my friends, so once he uploads his first part I'll upload a lazy chapter linking you there. The two are designed to be read concurrently, at least in the early days of the story, so fell free to concentrate on one or the other or both if you prefer. Right, I think that's all for now. So, read on! EDIT: Reading through Halopedia, I've found that that is basically the explanation Bungie's given for the presence of Noble team, and I'd just like to say, I thought of it first. Just take it as read that my Spartan III-Xs are of the same quality as Halo:Reach's Noble Team of Spartan IIIs. NB: The story is set before Halo 2, but I'm using the Halo 3 codes for weapons because it's just easier. Later I might add in some of the weapons from Halo: Reach. But I'm keeping my beloved Plasma Carbine, even if they replace it with the Needle Rifle.
1023 Hours (Ships' Time), October 03, 2552 (Military Calendar)/UNSC Destroyer Calcutta, in low orbit above Trial
"Alright, Helljumpers!" said the armoured figure enthusiastically as he addressed the specialised group of Marines assembled in what was commonly known as 'Hell's Waiting Room'. "The day has arrived! After so long spent cooped up in this cramped ship, we're in orbit above the planet Trial and the Old Man upstairs has finally decided that it's time to move out! Now, it's not just us leavin' the Calcutta, the rest of those greenhorn Marines will be goin' too, but they'll be riding in style. Sat all comfy in their Pelicans as they're chauffeured down to the surface, dining on caviar and sipping wine. But not you, gang. No, how will you get there?"
"WE GO DOWN FEET FIRST, SIR!" roared every soldier, and stepped backwards into their individual pods. The armoured man smiled beneath his helmet and waited, as he always did, until the group had strapped themselves in and were shut tight in the capsules before he said, "Damn straight you do. Humphreys, Mackenzie, you're with me in Knox."
"Oh, but Tank, I just got myself settled in my pod," whined Aaron Mackenzie as he stepped out of his personal HEV. The two gathered their gear and fell into step behind the SPARTAN-III-X Joshua-B048, known to his squad of ODSTs as 'Tank'. They hurried to keep pace as he strode down the central walkway, out of the chamber and into his modified Armadillo, which he called Knox. He spoke, and his voice crackled out of the helmet's speakers and over the team frequency. "Listen up, gang, and listen good. This is a pretty dangerous jump. We're in the lowest orbit possible, right over a massive Covenant coup on the TRIAL prison facility. Locked up in there are some very important Covenant prisoners that the ONI spooks haven't gotten round to 'processing' yet." Even over the com. channel the ODSTs could hear the sarcasm in his voice. "We have orders directly from Section One to not let a single one of them be recaptured, and we Helljumpers take our orders seriously. Brace yourselves – we're leaving in two minutes. Rendezvous at Knox when you land" He cut off and, said to himself "I hate it when I talk like that," making sure it didn't come out of his speakers. He punched in the code; the hatches in the Armadillo's titanium-C armoured walls and roof sealed and the structure was blown out of the bottom of the Calcutta's hull with an almighty thump. Seconds later, a large number of smaller thumps resounded out of a close section of the hull as the Helljumpers' HEVs dropped into space a fell towards the planet.
Tank busied himself checking the Armadillo's Warthogs were secure on their gel cushion, while Humphreys and Mackenzie were manning the external sensors. "We're getting a little hot," decided Darren Humphreys, "Blowing primary cooling cylinder." Outside the Armadillo, a cylinder full of chilled water blew apart and drenched the machine's exterior. Mackenzie checked the timer. "ETA thirty seconds and counting," he reported.
"Blowing secondary cooling cylinder."
"Tee-minus 20 seconds…"
"Still too hot! Blowing final cylinder!"
"Ten seconds! Brace yourselves!" The Armadillo burned through the outer and middle layers of TRIAL's atmosphere and landed heavily on its charred underside, creating a crater a few hundred yards wide. The crater wasn't due on the whole to Knox's impact on the surface, but a number of shaped explosives placed on the Armadillo's hull. This, combined with the position of the landing, resulted in the deaths and the destruction of half of what the UNSC forces were calling the Covenant's EchoC base.
Tank shook his head to clear it; unsurprisingly, the force of the landing had left his ears ringing. His MJOLNIR armour had prevented him from what had happened to the two soldiers: they were sprawled on the floor but had sustained nothing more than a few bumps and bruises. They got up and while Humphreys checked the 'Hogs were undamaged, Tank glanced at the machine's self-diagnosis system and Mackenzie scrolled through the readout of the external sensors. "Great," said Mackenzie, satisfied that the landing had done its job.
The beauty of an Armadillo ODST Defensive Outpost was that it performed a number of functions that helped a lot in ground battles. It served as a rallying point for scattered troops; obviously, these scattered troops were usually ODSTs after landing. The hydraulic stands (thanks to improvements in other fields being adapted to the process, hydraulics were still the best option for quickly lifting the Armadillos out of harm's way) and the thick layers of titanium-C plating on the walls and floor served to protect those inside from most of the threats outside. Of course, there were several holes, reminiscent of arrow slits in the walls of castles, for those inside to shoot out of, and ordinarily one chain gun turret which poked out of circular holes in the sides. The Armadillo excelled at long-term battles and sieges. It could all, unbelievably, be disassembled and packed into the Warthogs it carried inside. Finally, if launched and manoeuvred carefully so that it lands it the right place, one Armadillo landing could take out a lot of soldiers and send anyone left straight into shock. Unfortunately, there were some drawbacks. The Armadillo's entry trajectory became unpredictable and very dangerous for its occupants if it was launched from anything but the lowest possible orbits. The holes in the sides, which could be shot out of, could also be shot into, and forgetting this had led to the deaths of several good ODSTs. And packing it up took ages. But, like most machinery, if you were careful about how you handled it, and took good care of it, you had a very valuable edition to your arsenal. Knox, Tank's own Armadillo, had been modified substantially to provide added efficiency; there were three layers of titanium-B coating the interior; there was an extra chain gun and both were augmented with cameras to let the soldiers aim, rather than an unnecessary hole in the armour; all the holes in the armour including the large gap of the roof could now be opened and closed outside of the brief travel in space. The modifications were expensive, but they were worth it.
So when Mackenzie had said "Great," he was talking about the reaction their landing had had on the Covenant. The monitors showed Grunts in hysterics, running all over the camp. They showed Jackals staring up at Knox with an expression of awe upon their faces. Unfortunately, then the picture changed to a large group of Elites shouting at their soldiers, who, being far more scared of the more domineering species, scrambled to their weapons. "It's getting hot out there, Tank," said Mackenzie.
"Then you and Humphreys spray 'em with the hose, soldier." The two soldiers eagerly jumped to the chain guns and started up Knox's camera feed. "But don't start until I tell you." They nodded. Tank pulled the 99D-S2AM Sniper Rifle out of its wall-bracket and positioned himself next to one of the firing holes. He sighted on the crimson-armoured Elite in charge, and figured he could take him and two more before the real fight began.
Three shots rang out, and three bodies fell. A second later, the two chain guns started up and blue and purple blood splashed over the scenery. Tank fired the sniper rifle a few more times, taking down more Elites, before reloading it and slotting it back into its bracket. He took down a MA5C Assault Rifle and loosed a dozen rounds into the nearest crowd of Grunts. With his enhanced reflexes he dodged a Plasma Carbine shot from one of the remaining Elites and returned fire. The alien warrior stumbled and fell and was trampled on by panicked soldiers. The battle was a short and brutal affair, made shorter by the arrival of the eight other Helljumpers under Tank's command a short while later. It was only after all the Covenant at EchoC Base had been exterminated and every ODST had assembled at their position and begun disassembling the mobile fortress that the squad's AI Aries first jumped out of the Armadillo's command console.
Aries was a very powerful AI. Unusually for a squad intelligence, he was a smart AI, an actual artificial personality rather than a programme created to calculate tactics. It was because of Tank that his team were permitted a smart AI; his MJOLNIR armour could contain an AI and work with it, and dumb AI couldn't properly interface with a real human mind. He was taken from the brain of the old Marine General Appleby Thompson, the unfortunate man who had to make the decision regarding the Covenant invasion of the planet Thesis VI. They had taken a capital city and all of its inhabitants hostage and he had the options of trying to retake the city by force or engaging a tactical bombardment to destroy the city entirely. Both options resulted in heavy losses – either military or civilian – and both would cause most of humanity in the universe to hate him. He chose (perhaps correctly, in wartime) to drop a nuclear bomb on the city and was allowed to respectfully retire from service, as has always happened to those who make this sort of decision.
Aries' avatar took the appearance of a faun, or a devil, and his calculations and the information he was perusing at the moment showed on his long, curled horns. He was self-righteous and domineering, and unfortunately bloodthirsty. When considering the correct course of action for the squad, he would look at them logically and choose the one that resulted in the messiest fighting but the least possible casualties. This process would take several fractions of a second and the latter was his main priority: he was still a military computer, and when it came down to it he wouldn't, and actually couldn't, put his own feelings before the mission.
"I have taken stock of our options," he declared his regular harsh tones as an overhead view of the surrounding area appeared over the four screens above the console. While he was speaking the ODSTs were busy checking and reloading weaponry, and preparing the Warthogs for travel. "There are three Covenant bases between us and the TRIAL Prisoner-Of-War complex. Each is placed on a strategically useful piece of land, a hill, a ridge, and so forth. It would be suicide to attempt to go through these bases in order to reach the POW camp." The picture had drawn a blue circle around the POW camp and red crosses over the Covenant bases.
"So what do you suggest?" asked Tank, exasperated at the habit all AI seemed to share, of saying everything but the actual point.
"I suggest we take a more round about route. We go to the supply outpost CELL, and get an airlift from there into the prison facility. Luckily, there are no Covenant between CELL and TRIAL so they won't notice. We keep the element of surprise," He gestured unnecessarily at the screens as the image zoomed out, and showed a green line circling around the three red crosses, crossing over a fourth and connecting with the side of a new blue circle which was drawn over the CELL outpost.
"I notice you have us taking out another bunch of Covenant along the way," said Tank, grinning inside his helmet. "Elites in charge of this one." He indicated their position on EchoC base, shown with a black cross. "What about this one?"
"Brutes," Aries brushed over the question quickly. "I chose this way because, if we move fast, we can intercept them on a flat plain to give us better odds. And, if we take them out, we can stop the Covenant from surrounding the POW camp."
"So it had nothing to do with this being our first encounter with them and you wanting to see how they fight?" The Helljumpers laughed. Aries scowled.
"I'm here make your job as simple as possible. You walk and shoot, and I tell you where to walk next." He frowned at the soldiers, then at the part of the Armadillo which still hadn't been packed into a 'Hog. "Why haven't you finished taking this apart yet?" he demanded.
"We can't put it into the Warthog with you still in it," pointed out Tank. "You ride in me, remember? Get out of there," and then to the Helljumpers not waiting to pack away Knox, "Police the weapons. And the shields that haven't burnt out." The ODSTs that were double-checking their weapons jumped up and started collecting up the Covenant technology. Green, orange and red lights came from all corners of the battlefield as the ODSTs checked the Jackals' shields had enough power.
"A little respect, that's all I ask…" Aries muttered to himself as his avatar shrank into the console. "Just a little…" Tank pulled the card out of the computer and slotted it into the receptacle in the back of his helmet. The ODSTs quickly packed the computer into one of the 'Hogs and they set off.
Two of the squad jumped into each Warthog, the ones riding shotgun armed with assault rifles. All the squad had reloaded from the Armadillo's stores; Tank had slung a M90CAWS shotgun – his weapon of choice – over his shoulder, alongside his own assault rifle. He carried no sidearm, but most of the team did. Instead, Tank had bandolier of six fragmentation grenades slung across his right shoulder, and an ammunition belt slung on the other full of shotgun cartridges, allowing him to carry up to sixty extra shells for the weapon. He finished his personal arsenal with a combat knife strapped to his waist. The knife was custom-made, steel, with a titanium backbone for strength and rigidity. Serrated on one edge, and with a long blade, Tank had discovered that drawing it at waist height was perfect for taking off a Jackal's head.
Those walking hoisted their packs and set out at a steady pace, led by Tank, who had the way marked on his HUD by Aries. One Warthog took the rear guard, and the other circled the group. An ODST, more maybe than regular Marines, can endure six or seven hours at a good walking speed and the sun was setting when they finally made camp. The 'Hogs were immediately refuelled and Aries decided he was satisfied with their progress.
Trial was a small planet in the Inner Colonies. It shared a solar system with three other planets but was the only inhabitable one. Its surface was filled with huge, flat grasslands and unusual rock formations; it was very similar to the scenery found in the African savannah. It was a very good place to fight, through human tactics at least. It seemed to Tank to be filled with his kind of battlefields, and found himself thinking of how easy this mission would be. He stopped that train of thought at once. That sort of thinking led to complacency, which led to carelessness, which led to death, his own and that of everyone under his command. He shut his eyes and slept.
Tank's speech to his Helljumpers is lifted shamelessly from The Flood. The rest is all me, I swear.
Next time you have the pleasure of a real battle scene (because let's face it - this time around was a bit of a cop-out. "Short and brutal affair"? Coward! Write a proper battle scene!) and because it's the last part I wrote all that time ago, it shouldn't be too long in the coming. I'll just need to find a bit of spare time to upload, as opposed to the time to write the bloody thing.
J.