"You humans can do nothing correctly, you fail at the building of ships with shields, you have no plasma, you have barely mastered space travel! So Demon, what is it you and your kind can do?"

Poseidon looked down at his armored gauntlet that was lit by the rippling of water from the lights in the cavern he and his Spartan brothers and sisters fought to defend. The lights above him flickered dimly as the glowing light of the Elite's energy sword lit the split jawed face of the Major. The Spartan remained silent, but a thin smile graced his lips as he lifted his head and spoke confidently.

"We swim."

Chapter One

Planet Onyx, Zeta Doradus System

August 24, 2540

0014 Hours, Local Time

"Objective spotted," a young Spartan whispered to her partner who began to flash hand signals to another Spartan on the ground who passed the message on to the rest of the team who sat in cover in the thick underbrush of Onyx's Spartan Training Ground. There were six Spartans on this particular mission. They were all about ten years old and all orphans from the Covenant War. Their families' slaughtered before their eyes, instilling a burning hatred for the aliens who had started this genocide against Humanity, which made them the perfect candidates for this role as the elite soldiers of mankind.

The Spartans camouflaged themselves perfectly, hanging branches and leaves from the olive green ACU's to break up their profiles and hide them from any prying eyes while they searched out their target, which was of unknown make, size, and location, as always. This was their final exam for the year, and they wanted to make sure that they did this right. Their rankings depended upon it. Atlantis Team was ranked second behind Pacifica Team in the Delta Company Roster. They knew what they had to do to achieve their objective. Neutralize without sustaining casualties within forty-eight hours. They'd been given nothing but a knife, two bottles of water, and a single MRE each. How they were to neutralize their objective was as always their choice which they preferred. This gave them flexibility, and they used it to their advantage. Which was why they searched at night. It was Eden's favorite time of day, she loved the dark and the cover it gave her. She was the lively one of the two, being quite a singer, she had gotten them in trouble with it before and had taken her role on the team to heart, being quite snarky and sarcastic around the other Spartans and always had a quick one liner to say behind the instructors' backs, but not behind Ambrose's back. That man had the hearing of an ONI A.I. and the Spartans dared not get on his bad side, they'd seen what had happened when Eden had tried making a snappy remark as he walked away. The massive officer had her gripped around the throat and off the ground in less than a second and had whispered something in her ear that had made her stop trying to talk behind his back.

"Blue three and four get down here," Frank-111 ordered from down below.

"Roger that," Eden-213 replied quietly, "Come on Darius," she whispered to her partner, Darius-305.

Both young Spartans squirmed their way down the pine tree, poking their faces on the sharp needles of the tree as they made their way down as stealthily as possible. Hitting the ground they went immediately into a crouch position to stay low and out of sight so they didn't poke their heads up above the brush that their heads barely breached, being only about four to five feet tall for most of them. They were immediately greeted by the twins, Jules-271 and June-272. Both were what they would have guessed were the popular girls back at school when they had all been civies, before the Covenant had come to their worlds and killed everyone they knew. They both had the pretty faces of girls in the upper echelon of a student hierarchy and had the attitude to match and boys seemed to have the attraction to them to make them the girls that would have been used as a distraction when they went against other Spartan teams. Jules had her 18 centimeter long blonde hair tied in a tight bun as per regulations and had smeared her tanned skin with mud to better camouflage herself in the dark of the night. June wore her brunette hair in a ponytail, her hair being longer than her sister's but still in a bun as they'd made sure to do because of the habit of long hair to snag on things.

"This way," Jules said, leading the way through the small game trail carved below the bushes that the team used to their advantage.

Her blonde hair in its bun bounced as she led them to where Frank and Bryan were waiting in a ditch they had been using as their base camp and sleeping area. It was shielded by a large tree that had fallen in a bad freeze during a recent winter. The Spartans ducked inside and rolled onto the floor of the hollow dark hole and got up to make their report.

"We got a good look at it," Eden said, "A big dome in the old swamp. Not even half a click from here. There's a bunch of MP's guarding it on the perimeter with guard dogs and heat scanners."

"How many?" Frank asked, taking a mental picture of what they would be going against.

"At least fifteen. Maybe as many as twenty."

"Okay, show me their patrol pattern."

Darius nodded and grabbed a stick from off the ground cleared an area to draw out what he had seen. With the stick he sketched out a detailed and accurate map of the area between them and the target, complete with guards, their patrol patterns, water hazards, brush, grass, and trees and terrain. He finished in about five minutes, being very good at it and always the one on the team that would draw out an objective or a route.

"Looks like they have a bit of a gap here, in this little creek to the East of the objective," Jules observed, pointing a stick at the little gap between patrols.

"Or it's a ploy to draw us into a kill zone. You know how much the Chief loves doing that. It's more than likely covered by stun mines or razor wire in the water," June pointed out.

"Or it's these guys' first time and they made a rookie mistake," Bryan said quietly.

They all nodded at that, if there was one thing that they had learned was that their foes were human, just like them and so they were subject to mistakes. The young ten year old Spartans were quick to take advantage of this, and that was mainly how their team had advanced to become the second ranked team in the unit. But as the Colonel, he himself a Spartan II, had made them sure to understand that they were a unit and rankings didn't matter to him. But rankings mattered a hell of a lot to them. Competition was what kept them all sane, especially since the training they went through day in day out was bordering on torture. They'd lost quite a few of their own in the process of their training over the last few years, and it pained them all. In fact their team was one down from most of the other teams, except Hero Team, which had lost all but one of its members in an ambush by a pack of wolves while out on patrol a few months ago. The poor guy had decided he would take on the mantle of their training in their stead, refusing to be reassigned to new team. Their own missing member had been killed a year ago in a case of bad equipment when his parachute didn't open during a High Altitude Low Open jump. It had hit them all incredibly hard, they'd all been allowed a day to grieve for his loss but the very next day they were put right back into training as if nothing had happened at all.

"So I guess we're going through the creek," Jules observed.

"Underwater insertion, lovin' this mission," Bryan grumbled.

"I'm right there with ya," Eden chimed, grinning happily.

"At least she won't be able to hum her damn songs underwater, like she did the last time," June whispered quietly to Frank.

"I heard that," Eden replied defensively, "That time it wasn't my fault it was genius here who tried to knock out one of the guards with a rotted log."

She pointed at Darius who held his hands up in defense and tersely replied back.

"It was your humming that drew him over to us made me do that in the first place! And in my defense I didn't know that thing was so rotten it would have just snapped in half when I hit him."

Bryan chuckled quietly as he watched the two argue and listened to Frank trying to get them to shut up. It was their usual routine, the two scouts, Darius and Eden would always bicker over their past missions and their mistakes and their reasons for making those mistakes while Frank tried to keep the bickering to a minimum so they didn't get caught by their trainers like the very first time they had been on a mission. Franklin vividly remembered how long it had taken for the black-eye he'd received from those MP's to fade and did not want a repeat of that.

"Shutup the both of you, we're going through that creek in groups of two, keeping watch so that if one of us does get caught the rest of the team won't be compromised," Frank said, "Bryan, you and June take point. I'll be in the center with Darius, Jules and Eden watch our six. Keep fifteen meter spacing between teams we'll head upstream and enter here," Frank said quietly but definitively, pointing at a bend in the creek where their entrance would be out of sight of the guards and dogs.

"Alright, let's go," June said crawling out of their hide quietly and into the overhanging game trail.

"See you on the other side," Bryan said, following June out as quietly as possible.

The two of them left with Frank and Darius waiting at the exit to the hide, looking out for any possible traps that could have been lying in wait for the group to exit their spot. Frank looked as best he could with his seasoned eyes his dark hair melding with the smears of dirt on his face so that the only white showing was his gray eyes. Darius's lighter hair had mud rubbed into it but was also still a brunette in color. He had his Blue eyes scanning just as carefully and his ears just as tuned to every little noise the forest might make.

"It's pretty damn quiet," Darius whispered as the point team signaled the all clear for them to move up.

"Yeah I know, but let's not dwell we've got a mission to accomplish."

"Yes oh fearless leader," Eden said sarcastically throwing up a mock salute.

The two rolled out of the hide and doggy crawled over where they had agreed the signaling point would be and where June and Bryan were already gone from, lead away by the over eager brunette twin. June and Bryan had always been an interesting pair, Bryan, the largest on the team was the exact opposite of the overly active June. While June was the one to use for decoying he was the one for stealth. June and him balanced each other out quite well. Whatever June couldn't outrun Bryan could usually take care of, but when Bryan needed a distraction June was the one to step up and take center stage, more often than not, attracting more attention than she had intended which had led to the scar she had on her back as well as the one on Bryan had across his nose and left cheek when a group of ODST's had chased them down with Mongoose ATV's and beat them until an instructor had pulled a gun on them to keep the two from being killed when a knife was unveiled. They still hadn't lost their love for being on point, in fact they treasured it even more, and wouldn't go anywhere without each other, which drew the playful teasing that came with it, the two earning the nickname 'Love Bird Team.'

"Where do you suppose June dragged them off to this time?" Frank said as he signaled the all clear to Jules and Eden as they began moving out, following the path that they had taken. In the moonlight of the chilly night they could see the slight movement of their teammates through the brush and followed them slowly, avoiding fallen branches, nuts, rocks, and leaves to stay silent and unseen. It didn't take all that long before they reached their objective, the bend in the small feeder stream that fed the large pond their objective was held in.

"We need a way to get there quietly without breaking the surface, find some of those tube plants, the ones with the hollow stems," Darius suggested calmly, looking around in the shallows where the desired plants were always growing. The team soon found them growing ten yards up stream and quietly snapped off a few for their own uses.

"We good to go?" Jules asked her squad mates, looking around in the dark waters where only the head of her friends poked out.

A bunch of thumbs shot up out of the water and Frank nodded, signaling with a quiet hand signal that meant a total noise black out for them, and they stepped off floating just under the surface with the small tubular improvised breathing apparatuses poking up out of the water a few inches. They carefully tried to not touch the bottom lest they stir up the mud and alert the guards as the mucky water floated downstream before they did. The group attempted to match the flow as well so that the straws wouldn't draw any suspicion as they floated in towards the objective. The semi clear water refracted the ghostly light, that they had taken refuge in and cast a ghostly glow through the trees that just barely enabled them to see one another from a short distance. But their eyes were not their strongest source of information in this environment, as they would soon learn.

It wasn't long before the group was soon at the entrance to the pond and they started their careful infiltration, two by two. The stealth master, Bryan, led the jumpy June through the choking channel of water that rippled on the surface as it went down a slight decline and emptied into the pond. The two tried not to tumble as they were washed into the cold deep water as the eerie silence enveloped them. Taking two rocks he picked up from the bottom he clicked them together to form an improvised signal to his team to come on through. Two taps met all clear and one meant danger. He clicked the rocks twice and his team started moving in. First came Darius and Frank who made it in without incident and then came Jules and Eden who slid into the pond but Eden lost her straw and had to retrieve it from the surface without agitating the calm water above.

But unbeknownst to them their presence had already been detected and a group of foes now closed in to extremely close proximity, all with a scary silence and professionalism that made the young Spartans' approach seem like that of a drunkard.

They began to spread out quietly and move towards the domed structure not thirty meters away and within reach. They felt the cold feeling of dread sink into their guts as they approached the most dangerous part of the mission. Paddling slowly they felt the water tremble around them as something started to stir beneath them, but this feeling only lasted a second before the sources made themselves well known to the unaware Spartans. The first one to be attacked by the invisible figures was Jules, who was heard screaming into the water as she was yanked down into the depths of the lake with bubbles trailing her rapid descent. Shortly after Jules went down the team looked down to see shapes ascending towards them rapidly. Their dark shapes barely visible in the dark water as they moved on the Spartans.

In the shining of the moonlight Frank saw his partner's feet get grabbed from below and start to get dragged down just a few yards away, and took action. Frank took one last breath and dove down, knife drawn in an attempt at helping his team mate. But he barely made it down ten feet before he felt cold gloved hands grab his arm and start to dive. Frank tried to recover, swinging his knife hand awkwardly in the water as he tried to bring it to bear. But he saw the dark arm of his attacker snatch it gracefully and twisted his arm down and to the side until he felt the hand give way and drop the knife as the pressure point was squeezed forcefully and painfully. He realigned his body to face his attacker as they continued deeper and saw the shapes of men snatching his team from the surface with complete impunity, like a pack of sharks, grabbing them one and two at a time, his team fought back of course but it was futile. The burning of the lack of air roared in his lungs as Frank fought on, trying to kick, punch, and scratch at the cold armor and helmet of his invisible attacker. But every time he found purchase he felt the retaliatory reprisal blow of his foe land on him. He saw blood seeping from his nose as they finally touched bottom and Frank saw the ghostly shapes of other men moving about his team as he tried to wrench himself free of his attacker and reach the surface for a single breath of air which beckoned to him as the moon shimmered above it.

Frank saw the figures moving about the ranks of struggling Spartans, and every time one reached a Spartan there was a flurry of bubbles that spouted from the hands of the men and then settled as the Spartan under attack finally lay still. Frank saw Jules struggle futilely, kicking her legs out as her arms were pinned to her sides and was held in a bear hug and was finally subdued as her legs stopped their flurry of attacks. He saw the man carry her away into the dark, paddling with webbed feet and let the darkness envelop them with his team mate in his grasp. His lungs now screamed for air as he struggled with increasing desperateness as he was further subdued by the man he fought hard against. Frank felt himself twisted violently as pain shot through his arms as he was twisted around and felt the arm of his foe wrap around his neck and pin him back as a shadow descended upon him. He couldn't see any details but could see the blacked out mask descending on his face, spurting out bubbles furiously. He tried twisting his head and blood smeared the water as he fought to keep the capture mask from being attached to his face. But the mask went on quickly, just as easily as he'd been subdued.

The foul smell of the knock out agent stored inside filtered in as the water was flushed out and he was able to gulp in a huge breath of air. But he realized the mistake he had made just as his vision grew cloudy as he began feeling his extremities grow cold and numb and defy his commands to fight back. The mask stayed in place, and the grip of the man loosened a bit, just enough for Frank to manage one last kick and launch himself away and try to futilely turn to face the enemy. His vision grew dark as he grew dizzy as he tried to control his body but ended up sinking face up and saw the shimmering of the moon disappear as a dark shape covered it and a single armored had reached down to grab him. He then fell into the deep sleep the gas laced air had doomed him to.

In the water tight helmets of the opposing force the voices of the soldiers said with grim detachment to their Command and Control Center in the main training base where Chief Mendoza and the titanic figure of the CO, Colonel Ambrose.

"Targets neutralized, objective secured, over."

"Roger that," Mendoza replied, nodding grimly.

"These guys know their stuff, even if they have been phased out," Ambrose said quietly.

"As the predecessors of the ODST's they can do everything they do and then some. I'm not surprised," Chief said, looking at the timer on the computer, "Now Atlantis Team has about ten hours to come to and get loose so they can accomplish their objective."

"They'll do it, they're Spartans."

Next Chapter Preview: Who are these 'shadows' that attacked Atlantis Team? Find out next Chapter.