Author's note: this mini chapter is to show the direction I'm trying to take this story and some of the changes I'llbe making to the universe.
The reason for a lot of these changes is to show how I think the addition of UNSC technology would affect the system's alliance and their ability to not get destroyed. Also i didn't want to do another story in which the Master Chief is just kind of along for the ride. Even when those stories are exceptionally well written.
28 May 2200, 2345 hours
Sirona used to be a nice little colony once. Third squad, crossed the river at midnight. D "company" were ordered to maintain radio silence so they had no way of knowing if the rest of the company was still alive. Really the Company was at about one and a half platoon strength. Their objective was to reach the Reaper "concentration camp" in the region and blow the damn thing up. The recon patrol had determined the prisoners were a lost cause anyway.
LCPL Castle had to admit, the plan was ballsy. He had to wonder if Captain Thompson came up with the idea himself or was "volun-told" for the mission. He supposed it didn't matter. It had to be done and with the way this war was going… there were worse ways to die.
LCPL Momsen, the fire team point man brought his rifle up, signaling that he had seen the enemy. Then he pumped his arm to the side, signaling for a hasty ambush. They all took cover and waited for a Reaper patrol pass by. Silently, the fire team snuck up on the Reapers and slit their "throats" causing some kind of black fluid to leak. A quick and quiet death that was better than they deserved or a mercy depending on how you looked at it.
His father carried a Mass Effect "rifle" back in his day before the Navy had taken all of the EEZO for ships. Now he and every other grunt carried a rifle that was simultaneously advanced and outdated in that it relied on a type of conventional ammunition. The advantage was that Reaper forces couldn't track them and the weapons hit even harder than the old ones. The extra weight in ammo was a bitch though.
The combat patrol ran into several more security patrols on their way to the objective; each time they engaged, their chances of being caught, and unable to complete their mission so Castle and Momsen, as the fire team leader and point man respectively, had to pick their battles wisely.
As they drew closer to the compound, they began to hear the telltale screeching and moaning of Reaper forces. The prisoners looked gaunt and hollow; they were already Husks and only lacked the cybernetic enhancements. The team got into position and waited for the weapons platoon to make their-
Several buildings in the compound erupted into a blinding flash of light. The mortars were accompanied by machinegun fire then suddenly both were absent as the weapons platoon moved positions to avoid enemy air support. That was their cue to move in and mark any high priority hard targets while killing any soft targets in their way. All of this had to be done before any Reapers decided to break away from the orbital battle and wreak havoc on the ground troops.
An unholy screeching made his blood run cold. A Banshee had spotted them. Momsen screamed as the Asari lifted him up and fell silent as his lungs were ripped out of his thoracic cavity. Jester, the gunner, fired from the hip and hit her with a storm of lead, forcing her to retreat. Castle fired a grenade at her, neutralizing her as a threat. She continued to scream and moan but they couldn't spare the ammo to finish her off. Especially with another man down.
The fire team took Momsen's weapon, ammo, IFAK, and other vital gear, torched the body to prevent the Reapers from turning him into a husk, and moved on to their objective.
"Jake," one of the prisoners managed to moan at him. "Help me," he turned to look at her and realized that they were close once. Her name was Bethany Callahan. She was a country girl back on Eden Prime and talked about how she was going to the Terminus systems to help the colonies as they braced themselves for the inevitable invasion. He had seriously considered running away to join her four years ago, back when they were 15 year old kids.
"Jake, they're in my head. Please don't leave me!"
He was frozen in place. How could he leave her there? A crack of thunder snapped him out of his daze as he squeezed the trigger and put her out of her misery. She smiled as she fell forwards despite the massive exit wound.
The Reapers swarmed their position as they took cover in a lab. Abominations that once upon a time, only existed in the imagination of H.P. Lovecraft now filled every room. What could once leave grown men quivering in horror, only strengthened their resolve to kill the bastards.
Fire team Bravo called a firing solution on their own position as they were overrun. Castle felt the ground beneath him tremble as dozens of mortars impacted a few hundred yards away. There would be time to mourn later.
Fire teams Alpha and Charlie marked targets as they fought their way through the compound. When they reached the reactor, they overrode the parameters to turn it into a fusion bomb. They then fought their way to the rendezvous point.
As the senior lance corporal, Castle reported the mission's success to staff sergeant Weber. "That's excellent news, but we just got word that we're pulling out and getting off world."
"But staff sergeant, we're winning! Why would they pull us out?" Castle asked.
"Because it's a different story up there. Drop ships inbound, dust off in ten," he replied.
He relayed the message to the men in his squad. There were a few injuries that the corpsman had to treat but otherwise, they were "combat ready". At this point it only meant that they weren't dead or indoctrinated.
Stephens, a squad leader from the weapons platoon, came up to Castle. They had been friends their entire enlistment and had even volunteered instead of getting conscripted. "You know I was born less than twenty miles from here?" he asked.
"If you ignore the Reapers, it's still a shit hole," Castle joked.
Stephens laughed harder than the stupid joke deserved but it made him feel better about the situation. "Well you're not wrong but it was my shit hole."
"There'll be another time. The Reapers will get theirs."
The shuttles loaded up the company and ascended through the atmosphere in minutes. In orbit, were dozens of top of the line Systems Alliance and Cerberus warships. Each had carbon scoring from the Reapers' Thanix cannons. They were also maneuvering to break orbit. Thousands of miles beyond his vision, Castle knew were well over a hundred Reapers. There were probably dozens just on the other side of the planet.
There had been seventeen years of this. Almost a hundred human colonies and countless alien allied colonies, all whittled down to a few strong holds buy a merciless enemy with seemingly infinite numbers. Modern warships could even hold their own against a Sovereign class on a ship to ship basis. But they were hopelessly outnumbered.
On the ground, the Alliance always won. Modern tactics and weapons beat what he called "scare factor" for the Reapers' apparent dedication to demoralizing the enemy even at the cost of effectiveness any day of the week. The problem was that the Reapers knew that the ground battles were secondary. Any victory on the ground was negated by a defeat in orbit.
Soon there would be no more colonies, no more human settlements—and nowhere left to run. They would go extinct like countless cycles before them and after them.
Right after the Alliance destroyed every last Mass Relay to slow the Reapers down. The Alliance and other races no longer needed them for travel between systems. This new Cerberus technology was slower but didn't rely on EEZO so all of the EEZO in alliance inventory could be used to make shields and weapons—Navy shields and weapons.
Just as dozens of magnetic mass accelerator rounds impacted the Relay, it began to supernova and the Alliance ships jumped out of system.
Author's note: kami kyuubi sama thanks for your input. While you make a good point that the Spartans' original purpose involved more infiltration, as seen in The Fall of Reach. I figured that as the war against the covenant dragged on and UNSC was getting stomped on and humanity was effectively an endangered species, infiltration would probably stop being a priority for Spartans since they're not exactly going to blend in on a covenant ship. The only exception to this that I can think of is grey team and even Cole Protocol is set in 2535, or only halfway through the Human Covenant war