Twenty Nine

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Handing his helmet over to Reynold's felt like surrender.

But, Hood had sanctioned this mission, this op, and Cortana had uploaded spyware that would hide in the device Reynold's plugged into the memory banks.

"Thank you for your cooperation," Reynolds said once all was done. He held out a small flash drive. "Your family awaits."

And then he was gone.

John felt sick.

"John…"

"Don't," John said. The drive felt far heavier than it was in his pocket. "Please, Cortana. Not yet." He let out a breath. "Did it work?"

"Yes," she responded, a hard edge to her, "I'll wait until the summit has started before doing anything. Nothing Reynolds can do until we're back on Earth, anyway."

Home, John thought, and spun on his heel for the command deck.

The New Covenant was due to arrive.

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Moments after Cortana called out the disturbance, a great warship emerged from a strangely beautiful slipspace portal.

A prominent stern smoothed into a fat belly armed with heavy ordinance. This was a ship capable of holding thousands of souls, and ending millions. It lacked the sleekness John had come to see as typical of Covenant cruisers.

"Seems the New Covenant has been busy building new ships too," Cortana's voice hummed in the quiet that had settled over the deck. "IFF confirmed for Hammer of the Gods. It's the New Covenant. They're hailing, Admiral."

"Hammer of the Gods," Thel said under his breath. "Uncreative louts."

"Easy," John said, amused.

Thel growled, but subsided.

"Sir," Cortana said, and there was such a layer of honest shock, true shock, threaded there that all eyes turned towards her. "They're saying that they found a damaged UNSC vessel in the outer rims, and have recovered all personnel. Sir," she repeated, eyes unerringly findings John's despite that it was Hood to who she spoke, "they found The Spirit of Fire."

"What?" Hood's brows disappeared beneath the brim of his hat. "Can Captain Cutter confirm?"

"I'm detecting his neural implant. High Chief Gartallicus is patching him through now." Privately, to only John, Cortana said, "I am also picking up Spartans Jerome, Alice, and Douglas."

Heart pounding, mouth dry, John listened as Cutter spoke with Hood. He listened, and he hoped, and he ached deep inside.

"Sir," John said once the connection was cut. Gartallicus was sending over an envoy of dropships with the Spirit of Fire's crew, with his…

With his family.

God. His family.

"Permission granted," Hood said, barely turning to peer at John over his shoulder. There was a kind, private smile lingering in the corner of his mouth. "Go welcome our people back, Chief."

Asides from putting one foot in front of the other, John wasn't quite aware of heading down to the docking bay. The dropships had touched down by the time John worked his way down. Crowds had gathered, welcoming familiar and unfamiliar faces back with beaming grins and open arms as they poured from the dropships.

When three tall, broad forms appeared behind the stragglers, John almost wept.

He breathed, for a moment, for that was all he can do.

And then he ran.

Spartans never die, John thought, but sometimes they do.

Yet here, not meters away, three of them stood. John tore his helmet off without care. It fell with a heavy thud to the floor, forgotten. He was grinning, and his brothers and sister likely remembered a far sterner, grim-faced version of himself. John didn't care. All that mattered, was that they took their helmets off too and they were smiling.

Douglas still had that chip in his front tooth from training. Alice's red hair was cropped short as it had always been. Jerome's grin was crisscrossed with scars, new and old. They were older, made sharp by their lives and relentless dedication to their duty, but they were John's family.

And they were back.

"Gonna stand and stare or are you gonna give us a proper welcome back," Douglas said, wiggling his thick brows. "Ya big goof."

John laughed, and embraced his family.

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"So," Alice said, flatly, "this is a thing."

Cautiously, John observed their reactions to being told that the human race was now allied with the Sangheili. Medical staff were weaving through the crew of The Spirit of Fire while Captain Oston debriefed his flummoxed, and faintly wary, audience on the basic terms of the Alliance and the state of affairs on Earth. The Sangheili working in the docking bay kept a polite distance from the shell-shocked crowd.

Jerome sucked on his lower lip. A habit he'd never been able to break. "John," he slowly said, "please explain how the Arbiter can be standing there when I saw him die."

Tall and gleaming, Thel stood by Oston's side. He had yet to speak, but he would.

"Arbiter is a rank." John explained, "Thel became the Arbiter after the first Halo incident. He was the first to defect."

Three pairs of eyes flittered between John, Arbiter, and Oston. Douglas said, "You sound friendly."

"Thel is my friend," John kicked his helmet up and caught it. He didn't put it back on. "He saved my life, more than once."

Were it so easy, John remembered.

"Gartallicus mentioned the Alliance, the peace summit," Jerome, who was ranked higher than John now, murmured in a familiar soft tenor. "Still can't quite believe it, brother."

"Neither can I, sometimes." John rolled a shoulder in a small shrug. "I have a lot to tell you all."

"Before all of that," Jerome said, and his voice was guarded. John could still hear the apprehension in there, though. "How many of us are active?"

John held in a grief-filled sigh. "Two, not including myself."

"What?" Douglas snapped, eyes wide and pinched in the corners.

It was hard to face this welling grief outside of a mirror. "For a long time," John dared to admit, "I was the last."

I thought I was alone, went unsaid.

"Damn." Alice's jaw was tight. John heard her teeth grinding. "Damn, damn, damn."

The pain was too deep for his Spartans to hide, from him anyway, and John let them collect themselves. Distantly, he could hear Arbiter speaking.

"Who?" Jerome eventually asked solemnly.

"Kirk and Rene," John let a tiny smile free. "They're better, out of the tanks. Doing recon on the colony worlds."

Two was still too few, John knew. Deep in his heart, he would always mourn the brothers and sisters that would never be able to come home, to explore their existence outside of endless war.

Oston dismissed the crew, leaving them to a group of officers to distribute to empty quarters. The Captain saw John, and gestured for Red Team and he to come over. They did, silently putting their helmets back on.

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In the meeting room beside Hood's private office, with Captains' Oston and Cutter, Red Team, John, Dr Anders, and Cortana, the whole, grim tale of the last few months of the war unfolded.

"The Flood reached Earth?" Dr Anders hissed, features drawing tight. "We barely survived our encounter with them. How did you manage against an entire armada on top of a Covenant invasion?"

"I take it that this is when the Sangheili jumped ship? Well, not the most loyal allies, are they?"

Serina had a more acerbic sense of humour than Cortana. John didn't find himself appreciating it. Cortana muttered something unpleasant in his ear; she did not like sharing the ship with another AI, not after her time with Gravemind.

"Serina," Cutter reprimanded.

"Sir," she said, contrite enough that Cutter seemed to accept.

"Hard as it might seem to believe," Hood sighed, "the only reason Earth still stands is because the Sangheili left the Covenant."

John could see that his Spartans were unhappy with this news. The last decade of their lives had been spent battling Covenant, the muscle of which had been the Sangheili.

Opening a private link between them, John said, "The only reason I am alive, and not in cryo drifting in deep space, is because Arbiter mounted a rescue mission when the UNSC couldn't spare the manpower."

Douglas's helmet twitched, just slightly, like he wanted to turn and face John fully. "You're friends," he said, "aren't you?"

"Yes," John admitted, without regret but not without apprehension.

After a considerable pause, Douglas went, "Alright then. I won't flip out and start punching people."

Alice echoed the sentiment with a displeased, if acquiescing, grumble.

"Do you trust him? Not just with your life, but with ours?"

The question both was and was not an easy one. John had too few friends to want to risk losing one to prejudice, and his stomach turned at the thought of being forced to choose between new and old.

But, his Spartans deserved honesty. No matter the consequences.

"I do," John answered Jerome.

A pause. John did not hold his breath. His training didn't allow it.

"Then I'll give him, them, a chance."

John was not blind to the way the rest of Red Team gravitated towards Jerome, the way their posture relaxed with his acceptance. John felt a pang of loss for his Blue Team. It hurt more than it usually did.

"Thank you," John said, and turned back to the room.