Author's Note:
Okay, this chapter is going to take place after a LOOONG timeskip. Since chapter 11, 7 years and 7 days have passed. Aren is now a Petty Officer Third Class, and has helped both Blue Team and Dr. Halsey fight the Covenant. Throughout the last 7 years, Aren has used his vast knowledge of events of the Halo series to help the Spartans win their battles, and although a few Spartans have still perished, he has managed to keep his promise to Halsey. He still wears his MJOLNIR MK IV armor set-up from chapter 11 but it was upgraded to use the MJOLNIR MK V Energy Shield system. Aren was given a prototype version of the MK V armor system, but it was integrated into his MK IV armor so that questions weren't raised as to why he was so special. Also, instead of the standard green color, his armor is all black with Blue Team's insignia painted on the left shoulder.
I know that this is a huge jump in the Halo Timeline, but I was going through my books and other Halo stuff and I just couldn't for the life of me, figure out a good event to write about. So with that being said, please enjoy the chapter.
-Aren's POV-
-1730 Hours, July 18th, 2552-
-On board UNSC Pelican En Route to UNSC Alpha Headquarters, Sigma Octanus IV, Sigma Octanus System-
"139, come here for a second!"
I turned to see John motioning for me to join him. He was hunched over a small table that had been bolted to the inside of the Pelican's troop bay, along with a couple of other Spartans. I sighed and walked over to the group.
"Yes, Chief?" I said as I placed one of my hands on the edge of the table. "What do you need?"
The Master Chief turned and handed me a datapad with some aerial surveillance pictures. Many of the pictures were of large amounts of Covenant forces, but there were also ones of battered or destroyed UNSC bases. "Take a look at the 5th photo. What do you make of it?"
I flipped to the 5th page and saw a large stone building with many pieces of rubble outside. There was a metal, blackened sign on the front, obviously burned by plasma fire, and the sidewalk in front had a few civilian bodies on it. But the strange part was the way the doors were broken. It looked as if someone had driven a Warthog straight through the doors; the door frames were missing and broken glass was strewn all over. As I examined the picture, I noticed several sets of very large footprints.
"Well, that's something I haven't seen yet..." I said as I placed the datapad on the table.
"What is it?"
I turned to look at the Chief and frowned. "Sir, we're going to need a few Jackhammers."
John stared at me a moment and then looked back at the picture. "Why, what is it?"
"Have you ever seen a Hunter, sir?" John shook his head. "I figured as much. Anyways, a Hunter is a species in the Covenant that are as tough as a Spartan, but almost 3 times as large. They're made out of a colony of worms that are placed into a suit of armor that has a large shield on one arm and a huge Fuel Rod Assault Cannon on the other. They're damn near impossible to stop, but if you can get behind them and shoot them with a Jackhammer, they should go down no problem."
John crossed his arms as he looked back at the picture. "Alright, I'll have James grab a couple of launchers, then. You'd better go make sure you're ready to go. We'll be touching down soon."
I nodded and walked back over to my seat near the edge of the bay. I grabbed my helmet and clicked on the IFF tag on the inside, then slipped it on my head. As the helmet's pressure seals kicked in, my Heads Up Display blinked to life. The familiar blue holograms slowly came on one at a time, the last of which was my Energy Shield meter in the upper right-hand corner. It had been about a month since Dr. Halsey had given me my upgrades to my armor, but other than the energy shields, I didn't notice a difference.
I looked to my right and grabbed an M392 Designated Marksman Rifle. After making sure the ammo counter was functional, I slapped a fresh magazine into the reciever and slipped it onto my back. I felt the magnetic strip in my armor kick to life and the gun was in place. I decided to grab an MA5B Assault Rifle as well, and did the same with it, but opted for carrying the weapon. After grabbing a handful of ammo clips for my two guns as well as 4 frag grenades, I felt the dropship starting to decelerate. I turned and saw John standing at the edge with his rifle waiting for the Pelican to come to a halt. As the troop bay door opened we were all greeted by the sight of a handful of marines standing in front of a largely destroyed military outpost. Many of the buildings had been reduced to piles of concrete and glass, while the few remaining buildings were billowing smoke.
The Master Chief stepped out of the Pelican and made his way to one of the marines. He had his rifle slightly raised and aimed at the Chief, but he lowered it as John got closer. The rest of us marched out of the Pelican and spread out to secure the area, tend to wounded, and inspect the base. I, however, stayed near the Chief and found a wall of sandbags to set up a sniper position for my DMR.
"Master Chief, Sir!" The marine snapped to attention and saluted John.
"Corporal, at ease. Get your men together and we'll get to work," John said as he looked around.
The marine stared at the Chief, confusion displayed on his face. "Sir? I've got a lot of wounded here. What work will we be doing, sir?"
John looked back at the marine and cocked his head to the side. "We've come to take Sigma Octanus Four back from the Covenant, Corporal. To do that, we're going to kill every last one of them."
I frowned under my helmet and returned my attention to the horizon.
Were it so easy...
-1800 Hours, July 18, 2552-
-Grid Nineteen By Thirty-Seven, UNSC Alpha HQ, Sigma Octanus IV-
We had been at Firebase Bravo for only about 20 minutes, but already the thirteen Spartans that had gotten off of the Pelican were hard at work. One of us was busy guarding the dropship while another three were patrolling the area. Kelly had taken the rest to secure the LZ which left me to watch the horizon for any hostile contact. As I sat and scanned the horizon with my DMR, I could see huge plumes of thick black smoke rising off in the distance, probably from the remains of Alpha base; then there were two smaller smoke columns that were considerably closer, but I wasn't sure as to what they were coming from. John had taken the Corporal inside the perimeter of the base to talk and they had been in there for a few minutes before I saw the marine walking back towards the Pelican with a few wounded marines. I was tempted to help him get his men on board but was stopped when the Master Chief's voice crackled through my helmet's speakers.
"Team leader's, meet me at the LZ in three minutes."
I keyed the acknowledgement switch in my helmet and stood up behind the wall of sandbags. I switched out my DMR for my MA5B that was slung across my back and switched on the safety as I turned to take another look at the horizon. I stopped dead when I thought I saw the giant form of a Hunter. After blinking and shaking my head, I looked back and was made severely nervous when the Hunter was gone. Deciding to worry about it later, I turned and made my way to John.
When I arrived, the Master Chief was walking around looking at the destroyed base. From the way he was moving, I could tell he was bothered by the situation. I stopped a few feet away from him and saluted him, to which he returned and then relaxed. I too, looked around at the many destroyed buildings and broken vehicles and sighed.
"Sir, permission to speak?" I said as I looked back at John.
The Master Chief quickly turned to look at me and nodded. "Granted. What's on your mind, Aren?"
I adjusted my grip on my rifle and sighed. "Are you okay? You seem... upset about something." In all honesty, I had a pretty good idea what was wrong, but I wanted to give him a chance to talk to somebody about it. After all, I knew that he was probably trying to figure out what had caused everything to go wrong here.
"I'll be alright. I just don't understand how the marines that were stationed here weren't prepared for an attack."
"Chief, you and I both know that marines are never prepared for the Covenant. Hell, even us Spartans are barely ever prepared for them. I'd be thankful that any marines survived the attack at all," I said as I looked back towards the Pelican.
"I guess you're right," John sighed as he turned and face the dropship as well.
A few seconds went by, then Linda jogged up to meet us, followed by Joshua shortly after. They both saluted John and reported in with a status update, then the four of us watched as the Chief sent an topographical map of the area to our helmet's displays.
"Okay, let's go over this one more time." He paused as he adjusted the displays to allow a set of bullet points appear with our objectives described next to the map. "Mission goal one: we need to gather intelligence on Covenant troop disposition and defenses at Côte d'Azur. Mission goal two: if there are no civilian survivors, we are authorized to remote detonate a HAVOK tactical nuclear mine and remove the enemy forces. In the meantime, we will minimize our contact with the enemy."
We all nodded as John continued.
"We'll need to avoid these four areas though," four different streams were highlighted in yellow as the Chief spoke. "They're being patrolled by Banshee squadrons, so they're a no go." John also highlighted the area where Firebase Bravo had once been. "And according to the Marines, this area is hot, so we'll also be avoiding it."
"Red Leader, take your squad in along the coast. Stay in the tree line. Green Leader, follow this ridgeline, but keep under cover, too. I will be taking this route." The Master Chief traced a path through a particularly dense section of jungle, that looked like it would be difficult to traverse.
"It's 1830 hours now. The city is thirteen kilometers from here—that should take us no more than forty minutes. We'll probably be forced to slow down to avoid enemy patrols—but we all should be in place no later than 1930 hours."
He zoomed into a city map of Côte d'Azur. "Entry points to the city sewer system are—" He highlighted the display with NAV points. "—here, here, and here. Red Team will recon the wharf areas. Green takes the residential section. I'll take Blue Team downtown." John paused as the map returned to normal and zoomed out. "Any questions on the plan?"
Linda was the only one who said anything. "Sir, our communications capabilities will be limited underground. How are we going to check in with each other while keeping our heads down?"
"According to the Colonial Administration Authority's file on Côte d'Azur, the sewer systems here have steel pipes running along the top of the plastic conduits. Tap into those and use ground-return transceivers to check in. We'll have our own private COM line."
"Understood," Linda responded.
"As soon as we leave, the dropship dusts off and will move here." He indicated a position far to the south of Alpha camp. "If the Pelican doesn't make it . . . our fallback rendezvous point is here." He highlighted another area that was fifty kilometers to the south of the camp "ONI's welcoming committee has stashed our emergency SATCOM link and survival gear there."
None of us said anything after that, we all knew that the survival gear was a moot point if the Covenant glassed the planet, but nobody mentioned it.
The map disappeared from our displays and we all looked around at one another. "Stay sharp, people. And come back in one piece. Dismissed." John was firm in his statement, but I could tell he was sincere by what he said. After all, this plan was a particularly delicate one. Anything could go wrong, and despite my knowledge on the events that would unfold here, I still was nervous. The Hunters would be tough to deal with, and I knew how to take them down, but even then, I felt like something was wrong.
Everyone had dispersed and was getting busy with their assigned tasks when John switched over to Blue Team's frequency.
"Alright, Blue Team, form up on me for orders."
A few minutes later, the members of Blue Team were gathered in a small bunker around a metal table. Kelly, James, Fred, and John were all standing around the table with me and we were going over our part of our plan. Blue-Two, or Kelly, was in charge of the Nuke and medical gear, Blue-Three, Fred, was in charge of our explosives, and Blue-Four, or James, was in charge of carrying our communications equipment. John was going to carry the detonator, as well as a canister of blue smoke that would be used to signal for pickup. And I was going to carry the M41 SSR MAV/AW Rocket Launcher, as well as two cases of rockets for the launcher, which was intended for any Hunters that we could encounter.
"Alright, let's go." John said as finished preparing our weapons.
And with that, we started the long walk to Côte d'Azur.
-Aboard Covenant CPV-Class Heavy Destroyer 'Cleansing Prayer'-
-Third Person POV-
"How goes the fight, Commander?"
A lone Elite stood upon the bridge of the Cleansing Prayer, observing the many images that flashed upon the viewscreen in the center of the room. Pictures of large green human soldiers danced across it and recordings were played back as Commander Thuvo 'Vonamee overlooked the many reports from his troops on the planet below. As he was addressed by the noble Prophet of Resilience, he turned and bowed.
"Your Holiness, thank you for coming to see me," Thuvo nodded as the prophet approached him. "I'm afraid I have some rather, unsettling news. Over the last few engagements with the Humans, we have been compiling a rather large list of their capabilities, as ordered by the Prophet of Truth," He paused as an image of a black armored human with a golden face. He looked like a very formidable opponent, and was similar in appearance to other Humans that were known as 'Demons.' The image showed the Human punching a Sangheili warrior's face into a flattened form.
"However, over the course of the last few engagements, our scouts have reported this Human appearing more and more," Thuvo explained. "And to make matters worse, this particular Human almost always is able to predict our deployments and counteract them."
The Prophet of Resilience examined the picture for a moment in silence as he mentally decided how to proceed. If this particular Human was able to predict the actions of the Covenant, then The Great Journey was in jeopardy.
"Very well. I will send a report to the Prophet of Truth immediately. In the meantime, if any of your troops gets the chance to capture this Human, do it. I want to know how it is able to predict our actions, and if possible, use this ability against the Humans."
Thuvo bowed as he was given his orders. "By your command, your Holiness. I will alert my men immediately."
Resilience exited the bridge, leaving Thuvo to go about his task. The Elite looked back up at the screen and clicked his mandible in disgust.
"I will enjoy hunting this one down..."
Author's Note:
There's Chapter 12 for you guys! I'm terribly sorry for the delay on this chapter, everyone. Over the past few weeks, I've been busy with my birthday, my mom's birthday and then I caught a case of Bronchitis and an ear infection, so yeah... Needless to say, things have been pretty hectic.
So anyways, I hope you liked the chapter. I really had fun writing the portion with the Covenant. In case you didn't know, Thuvo 'Vonamee, the Prophet of Resilience, and the Cleansing Prayer are all my original ideas. I decided to implement this side of the story because a while back, someone left me a review saying that the Covenant should learn about Aren and what he could do, and act upon it. So, that's what this was for. I really hope you guys liked it.
Anyways, I want to thank the following people for favoriting/following the story since the last chapter, and for leaving a review on the last one as well:
Lizard4523
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Anyways, thank you guys so much for your support. Every bit of support and feedback helps me as a writer. And to everyone else, please, go ahead and leave me a review, let me know what you think about the story. And if you want to stay up to date on when I post a new chapter on this story, go ahead and follow/favorite this.
And if you like this story, go check out my other works:
The Red Reaper
The Ranger And The Rose: A RWBY Story
So thank you again, so much for reading.
As Always,
I'll See You Starside,
Soul's Release
