Ch1

Recesses

Anomia 2553 January 15th

Hazed Path Park 0030hrs

Major Daniel. W. Grey stood outside of the balcony of the recently captured structure the Covenant had controlled, the forest around him that had once been set alight now cooled, the cool night air had begun filtering in, he stood watching the night long after the glow of the sun that had set on the horizon.

The hours had crept by as he stood, tall lean and strong figure, he had modified armour consisted of Energised shield plates of his powered Venerator armour and combat camouflage coloured over layer over his body suit, the young man also had a modified Recon helmet.

The nights had gone and come, three days the Militia had held the position of Hazed Path Valley with the Covenant trying to break in every so often, the Covenant had gotten desperate trying anything and everything but the war had already been declared over, the survivors had taken back what was lost, some cities had just been starting reconstruction and people starting lives again, Shaun Lake city was the only one to fully recover, it had been the Militia's base of operations, it had possessed a orbital elevator that served as the only means of getting into space, Grey sighed, the war had been costly, he knew as well as every other Militia marine.

Only three days ago he had been the one to break the Covenant within the valley, the Covenant had held the valley attempting to study or activate an artefact that had been left thousands of years previously by another ancient sapient species, the discovery had generated more fear with the population because of what this meant, it could be bad or very bad, considering everything it would probably be bad.

It had been the first time that they had also been on the attacking side; for the most part the Militia had been focusing their forces on defending the survivors of the colony, all 5,700,000 that had been recently rebuilding, most were orphaned children and families, doctors and technicians and some others, the only remaining people of the 9 million either than their neighbouring colony of Shanxi.

He had been in the action for over 9 years since 2545 being the only one who had launched successful campaigns against Covenant occupiers, he quickly rose in rank, after several months since Operation: First Blood he had an entire company under his command with vehicle support, he and a few selected members had been part of a special program just after the Militia was formed.

Project Venerator, the project had been created to advance different groups of children with gene augmentations, he and hundreds of others were selected for the program, from the hundreds of others the ONI scarped through each candidate carefully culling off those incapable or unable.

His parents did not wish for him to undertake the project, but from his own point of view the chance to do something great go to him, so they eventually agreed, the ONI asked for the family to keep the project secret, the chance of them ever talking would meant they would lose their son, reassurances from them on what they were going to do. "Your child has the potential to help protect Earth and her colonies and the millions if not the billions that are under threat." With that said they took him, he was only seven.

The first few months within a secluded facility for training and education helped build up his strength, the sheer scale of the project that been undertaken was massive, he had the honour of being the first in the project, he soon met with many others, but they had only been referred to their number rather than name, the war continued for over another six years until they were ready.

He and his supplementary family continued their training for over six years, the forces were separated into Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, Upsilon, Sigma and Omega platoons over 350 children he had seen what they could achieve and pushed him and his platoon to do what they could, the war with the Covenant continued and ONI was frantic in preparations for the first generation to be sent into the field, UNSC forces were stretched and the chances of survival were slowly dimming.

The first procedure enhanced his muscular structure and growth hormones, the second to third came in a period between each other, they enhanced his neural pathways, and his cornea allowing more enhanced sight and intelligence, the final few were his enhanced organs and reflexes, the project which had taken over a year changed over the hundreds of lives and ended a dozen more.

The Venerator project had been to create a separate Spartan force but by using different methods, the augmentations they had received were prototypes for future Spartans but they were not as lethal because the augmentations were using different base line chemicals and procedures, but it had taken much longer for them to become active, some of the others say too long, Reach was glassed two weeks before deployment.

He and his fellow augments were technically not allowed to be seen by the public as the colony was an independent state, the population wasn't allowed to know of ONI secret project within their midst, the Venerators were allowed to call their families a few times though, the talks were only for a few minutes and most of the time they had a chance to send something back, ONI had wished to keep them from becoming too attached so the talks were slowly pushed out of the way with a yearly message or two.

The ONI operations learnt of Reach being glassed, the ONI quickly set the Venerators to leave for the front within the coming weeks, the first platoon to go was Sigma readily needed to help with Covenant pursuers in Beta Centauri which had only recently came under attack, this was also a good means of testing the efficiency of the Venerators.

Nova Stratus was technically the only colony within reach of Beta Centauri seeing as it was the second furthest colony in existence and being the most remote and hardest to locate.

This made the colony ideal for the colonists who wished to avoid UNSC control but with the ONI hidden under the public radar, the colonies were not as unsupervised as they had actually known.

The platoon left for orbit and Grey watched another day go by, the only problem with what had happened, that Sigma had successfully diverted the enemy forces from devastating the colony but had attracted attention, the UNSC fleet orbiting the colony soon found themselves against a wall as more Covenant ships poured out of slip space, Sigma team and their ship drew the enemy forces from the colony and made an emergency jump to Nova Stratus, the plan was to lose the Covenant within the ion storms that usually raced through some of the sectors, but sadly it only half worked, twenty five ships had chased them and all but one were lost, the last one had managed to hide itself and follow Sigma's frigate to the colonies, it then broadcasted out loud a message, the Covenant forces soon learnt of the colonies and swarmed in.

After that day most of the Venerators had been scattered fighting over their home world and the others which came under attack, the Covenant thankfully couldn't communicate with their forces outside of the nebula because of the ion storms, the Covenant assault carrier the last ship to be brought down attempted a jump but a shot from a Shiva nuke stopped it in mid-flight, though it came at a consequence as all radio and sub-space communications had gone down, the ONI was the same, they had lost all communications, the colonial fleet had been wiped out and what remained was a wreck, the war with the Covenant occupiers was all that was left.

The night came back to him, the open air once tasted of the blood and metal now was a cool and clear, the refreshing forest night had played memories in his head, the nights he had gone camping with his brother and the times of going out with his family, the times he had spent with James, Christian and Jenny and the rest of Alpha, all had gone, the night the Covenant came.

His attention was quickly brought around when he heard a loud crash, not to his surprise was his medical officer Hyung. J. Andrew, Andrew had served as his medic when they first met when he enrolled as Militia two years previously, Andrew had a knack for knowing different types of ailments and earned a lower class medical promotion, he and another dozen had also fought in the first battle, when they met.

Andrew quickly straightened up to face his CO and stuttered something quickly Grey had understood. "S-si-sir the techs and ONI spooks just found something you need to see."

Grey sighed; ONI had a way of getting under his skin the called him for the ridiculous assignments. He went down the long hallways of alien ancient glowing glyphs, the sight of them had interested him, the fact that there was something older than the covenant and humanity was always something new, the walk to the Cortex as Lira the smart AI had told him what it was not very long, the chamber was only a hundred meters below and the mysterious Cortex itself spanned even further down the chamber.

He reached the chamber a few minutes later; the Cortex a massive dark blue device suspended within the chamber had four large prongs at the end with top had eight, four in the middle were merged as one, and four on the outside but in the middle it had a massive chamber of energy, the ONI and tech teams said that it was the only power source it ran on.

He made his way past the bustle of the research team until he reached a certain raven haired woman with strangely tinted glasses, the woman turned to face him. "Ah, Grey how have you been, it has been a rather long time, since our last talk hasn't it?"

Grey had a usual neutral face, but he was curious there was only one other person either than his Squad that called him 'Grey' or 'Major'. "Dr Valerie, I knew there had to be a reason."

She looked at him in a curious manner and asked. "And why would that be?"

Grey looked to her and replied in a matter-of-factly tone. "Because you used to order me and my squad out into the field for your pet projects, now you're going to ask me and my company for another plan, and I'm going to assume it has something to do with that." Grey pointed to the Cortex.

Dr Valerie nodded with humour and replied. "Yes sadly it does but it won't be here."

Grey was confused. "Wait, why isn't it here?"

She fumbled around with her tools like she always did when she was going to drop a bombshell. "The ONI has requested a transfer of your company and another to be deployed elsewhere."

He turned to face her again and asked. "Wait you don't mean that we're being deployed elsewhere with two other forces, as in somewhere else we have no clue about?"

She looked at him and said. "The Covenant has taken an interest on the Cortex because of its unique origins but the problem is that the Cortex can't be utilised inside the chamber and what's more is that we found something more."

The picture on another display showed a map of their sector; she zoomed into a section revealing a large object in space, the same design and shape but separate rather than the Cortex between Anomia and Shanxi.

Grey figured something like this would happen. "You mean go to the other side of that relay without any or no Intel on what might be there, and that and you know how I feel about space?"

She looked at him as though he hurt her. "Of course there we'll give you Intel, it'd be a waste to lose a Venerator squad as well as the entire companies."

Grey stared at her and asked. "No it wouldn't but is it really worth it?"

She paused at what he said and remembered what happened, she slowly turned away and replied. "No this is not like last time Grey, I still know that you grieve about Mikal, it won't end like before."

He sighed to himself and proceeded to ask. "What is it that we need to do?"

She activated a display screen of what they were looking for, the image came through with what looked like a darkened the same object, readouts and gravitational reports, Valerie then told him. "The probes we sent through show that it ended up at some kind of station similar as the one on this side, the scanners showed nothing else afterwards, the most interesting thing is that it had travelled over thousands light years in nothing short of a few moments."

Grey was surprised, the mysterious device had slung the probe over an incredible distance, the technological feat in such things weren't exactly unheard but it concerned him, he turned to see the Dr had started to pack her gear, he could only guess… "You're going coming with us aren't you?"

The Dr smiled and she replied. "Why wouldn't I, beside you guys always get the fun, besides you need the best specialists available around to help don't you?"

He wondered what she meant by that when suddenly. "Oh, Grey did you miss us?"

He turned to see a half a dozen of the previously known group of smart AI given to the Venerators during their initiation on the field.

He could make out all of them, Daniel, Miran, Dylan, Alexi, Jackson, and Lima; the group simply waved a friendly hello.

Grey looked back to the Dr and asked. "So I guess the facts that we're going into space suggests that ONI has a new and shiny ship ready for us."

She simply nodded and asked him. "Yes, but it won't be shiny, first we have to get going now if we're going to catch it, tell your company to get to the Forest road rail and get on the next one to Shaun lake and get to the orbital elevator we've got ourselves a surprise."

He acknowledged and headed to the exit, he knew that the day was going to be anything but uneventful.