Chapter 1

Date: August 13th, 2552
Time: 26:00
System: Epsilon Eridani
Planet: Reach
Location: ONI Tower Base
Mission: Survive

Ka-Boom!

The sounds of battle filled Connor's ears, the screams of the dying mixing with the ratatat of gunfire and the bubbling of fired plasma rounds. A wave of heat washed over Connor as liquid plasma splashed into the corridor.

A massive hole had been burned through the wall to Connor's left by the most recent plasma shell. A few hundred meters away the covenant had set up a group of long range Wraiths and they had spent the last few hours reducing Tower Base to a melted mess of burnt steel and blackened courtyards.

"MOVE YOUR ASS TWENTY SEVEN!" Ravi yelled, her voice still containing a hint of her Indian ancestry.

Connor, spurred on by his squad leader's rather unconventional encouragement, leapt to his feet and dived to the side as a second plasma shell came sailing through the hole in the wall and impacted with a BOOM! Connor didn't stick around.

He took off at a dead sprint, accelerating to 55 kilometers an hour in under three seconds and was soon joined by his two squad mates; Ravi–009 and Sanya-105.

The green clad Spartans pelted down the corridor, their Mjolnir class armour protecting them from shards of debris that were thrown up as the Wraiths continued their deadly bombardment.

Connor stumbled and his shields flared as a plasma bolt struck his shoulder.

"Shit!" Sanya swore, as his own shields flared "we've got company!"

Connor glanced back as his shields continued to fall under an onslaught of plasma bolts. Six elites had materialized out of thin air behind them and were giving chase; their plasma rifles sending blue bolts of death whizzing towards the Spartans.

Connor's heart leapt into his throat, the Elites had them up against the wall and they knew it. Rather then close the gap between them; the Elites were sitting a safe distance behind them, running after them at a controlled lope and firing lethal plasma towards the Spartans. Between the Elites and the Wraiths, the Spartan's chances of survival were dwindling.

"This way!" Ravi yelled, kicking a metal door halfway off its hinges "We've got to get further into the base!"

Ravi sprinted on ahead, delving into Castle Base's interior facility, Sanya followed her as the hail of plasma intensified and Connor brought up the rear, swandiving through the shattered doorway as plasma shells smashed through the corridor's walls and flooded its length in a sea of plasma.

"Keep moving!" Ravi ordered, leading the way through Tower Base.

After five minutes of travel Ravi ordered a break, leading her team across an open courtyard littered with twisted, burnt bodies and into Tower Base's mess hall.

The interior of the mess hall was remarkably devoid of bodies. Most of the men must have ran out to secure weapons and ammo when the alarm had sounded and been cut down in the courtyard by Covenant fliers and artillery.

Connor and his team had also been caught without their weapons when the assault had started, a rare thing for Spartans, and he shuddered to think what would have happened he been a normal soldier like Tower Base's marines.

Six rows of four tables, each one large enough to seat ten people, ran the length of the room, separated by a wide passage that led up to the food counter up the back of the building. Plates of food, all of them stone cold, still rested upon the tables.

"Secure the perimeter," Ravi ordered, pointing to the doors they had just come in through "and keep it quiet, we don't know if those damned Elites managed to follow us or not."

Connor and Sanya nodded and began carrying the tables over to the mess hall's twin double doors, stacking them lengthways across the entrances. The tables wouldn't do much to stop the Covenant, but they might slow down any Elite strike teams that came after the Spartans.

As her teammates were doing this, Ravi had hopped the food counter and gathered up a dozen or so MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat. She walked over to one of the few remaining tables and dumped the silver packages onto their surface.

She removed her helmet revealing pale brown skin and long black hair done up in a bun that was pressed to the back of her head. Her eyebrows were long and slender and beneath them her eyes were a deep, dark brown. Her cheekbones were high and, due to a string of bad luck with cryostasis tubes and lost ships, she and her team were all in their mid thirties, with at least two solid decades of combat experience under their belts.

Though Ravi was not perhaps beautiful, she was still very attractive. Or at least she would have been if it weren't for the spider web pattern of scars that started above her right brow and continued down to where her neck met her shoulder, courtesy of a marine's mistime frag grenade.

Connor in stark contrast to her had only one scar, a set of three faint claw lines that bisected his left eyebrow where a Grunt of all things had managed to scratch him. He was aside from this, and much to his dismay, pretty more then anything, with high cheekbones, thin eyebrows and bright green eyes, coupled with short yet messy blonde hair and a perfectly straight, white set of teeth.

Sanya however had both of them outmatched when it came to scars. A massive man of Russian descent, he was fiercely handsome with a strong jaw covered in just a hint of black stubble and thick eyebrows that overshadowed a pair of deep black eyes. His scars covered not just his face but also his body, and with him being the most resilient of the Spartans, he had a lot of them to show. Diagonally across his face ran a thin scar from an Elite's plasma sword, his right cheek contained a rectangular burn scar running up towards and ending at his ear. His left brow was marred by a savage scar, which ran parallel to the first and continued down to his jaw. And at the top of his right temple was a smaller version of Ravi's scar, which had been caused by a piece of shrapnel striking Sanya in the head some time ago.

"Dinner is served." Ravi announced, her accent fading noticeably as it did when she wasn't stressed "Get it while it's hot."

Connor and Sanya trudged over to the table and each Spartan took four MREs for themselves, three for eating and one for keeping. Connor tore into his first packet, tasting preserved meat and hard mash, all of it cold.

"Ugh!" he exclaimed, never taking his eyes off of the barricaded entrance "This stuff's worse then the slop they used to serve in basic."

"It not so bad," Sanya replied, speaking with the stereotypical accent that he seemed to love so much "you should taste the crap in my home town. I don't remember much about the place but I do know that the food there could kill a vulture's appetite."

Connor and Ravi chuckled, and then went back to eating. After finishing their second MRE Ravi called their attention to her.

"All right here's the plan," she began, as Connor and Sanya listened intently "the Covenant are all over this base like curry on a nan. So we've got two objectives; one, bust into the armoury and gather weapons and ammo."

Connor couldn't have agreed more with that first one. Whilst the rest of the Spartan Twos had been sent off to defend strategic locations across Reach such as the generators for the Orbital Defense Platforms, Connor and his teammates had been re allocated by ONI brass to the top secret Tower Base for a 'vital' mission.

"Two," Ravi continued "we head to the vehicle bay and procure land transport, then make our way over to New Alexandria and finish or mission."

Their mission was in fact the recovery of the city's superintendent data to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Apparently New Alexandria's superintendent had been used as a fail safe for some of ONI's more 'clandestine' projects, and with the Covenant sieging the city, that information was now in danger of falling into enemy hands.

"That's a hell of drive Rav," Sanya said, keeping his voice low and using Ravi's nickname "New Alexandria's gotta be at least seven days away by land. And how do we get off this planet once we've finished the mission?"

"Civilian evac is scheduled to start in five days," Ravi replied, finishing her third MRE " we get there in six, grab the data and hitch a ride out on one of the civilian evac birds."

"Six days is cutting it close." Connor said, pushing the empty MRE's to one side "But I suppose air is out of the question."

"Yeah, the Covenant own it," Sanya agreed "we stand a better chance of going un noticed if we travel by land."

"All right pack it up." Ravi ordered, standing up

and slipping her fourth and final MRE onto one of the clips on her Mjolnir armour's belt "We leave in – GET TO COVER!"

Ravi's accent thickened as she threw Sanya, a total of four hundred and fifty five kilograms, clear across the room.

Blue bolts of plasma slammed into the position where Sanya had been only a fraction of a second ago, melting the table's surface and throwing up sparks on impact. Connor and Ravi pulled on their helmets and scrambled to dodge the incoming fire, their shields flaring as they took hits.

Sanya landed on the far side of the room, rolled, slipped his helmet on and dived behind the food counter at the end of the building where he was quickly joined by Connor and Ravi.

Connor risked a peak over the counter and counted six Elites with plasma rifles firing at them. He ducked back behind the counter as blue bolts of death screamed towards him.

"Shit!" he exclaimed "Looks like the Elites are back, I counted six, they look like spec ops."

"Great," Sanya sighed "probably the same ones as before too. They're good, they got in here cloaked and we never even noticed."

"I noticed!" Ravi interrupted "Now come on, there's a storage locker in the back, a big freezer with metal walls that we can use for cover."

"It's a dead end in there though," Connor argued, moving towards the freezer "we going in for CQB?"

"Yep," Ravi replied as they reached the safety of the freezer "we're going to pull them in close and then beat tem to death."

"I like it," Sanya rumbled "easy to remember, even easier to do."

The three Spartans readied themselves within the confines of the steel freezer, eagerly awaiting the moment when they would be able to level the playing field.