The Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI, the Shadowy Intelligence Service of the United Nations Space Command. Like other branches of the UNSC, ONI's purpose was the defense of Earth and her Colonies. Unlike other branches, ONI used less... conventional means to achieve their goals. Espionage, infiltration, and assassinations. While the other branches worked in the limelight, ONI worked from the shadows, undertaking secretive wetwork assignments. ONI cared very little for the rules and regulations that the standard military followed, actively breaking them to achieve success.
Among the various secrets ONI dealt in, one in particular was worthy of the most mention. The idea to take orphans from Fallen Earth Colonies, those terrorized by the likes of the Alien Covenant and the Human Insurrection, and train them to be efficient killers conditioned to obey every order. This idea, no, this program was known by one name. The Spartan-III Program.
Indeed, these weren't the first Spartans. Their predecessors the Spartan-II's had forged themselves a legend, one of superhuman warriors that always prevailed against even the most insurmountable odds. It's said that Spartans never die.
Sadly, this was all far from true. While formidable, the Spartan-II's were not invincible. Years of service had taken a hefty toll and now only a few of the "Invincible" Spartan-II's remained, nowhere near enough to defeat those who would see Earth reduced to glass. Furthermore, the strict genetic requirements made the Spartan-II's difficult to replace, not to mention the flawed process which transformed them into augmented super soldiers had a high change of killing the subject before they even had to chance to serve.
All of this made those in charge realize a new course of action was needed. The first step was accepting an unfortunate truth; Spartans die. With the question of their mortality out of the way, the Spartans could truly be made the soldiers humanity needed them to be, expendable assets, able to be replaced. Advancements in technology permitted ONI to not only decrease, but eliminate the lethality of the augmentation procedures; while still cutting costs in order to make them far more numerous and cost-efficient than their predecessors.
Top it all off with even more strenuous and grueling conditioning designed to beat the trainees into peak physical form and make them more receptive to any and all orders; you have an exceptionally lethal force, bred to fight, born to kill. This is how the Spartan-III's came to be.
Now, after hearing all of this, ask yourself what you get when a machine designed to kill on command is freed from the shackles of it's masters and forced to think for itself.
Among the Spartan-III's was one in particular, far more lethal than any of their kin, one with a tendency to work alone with pinpoint accuracy and deadly efficiency. A hyper-lethal vector, capable of singlehandedly eliminating entire militia groups without so much as a trace. An illusive killing machine with very little known about them, just as ONI intended.
Spartan-B312. The Lone Wolf. ONI's Grim Reaper. Formerly assigned to Beta Company, but immediately reassigned after training, thus sparing him from sharing in their demise during Operation: TORPEDO. Now the Grim Reaper was a solo operative, going wherever ONI sent him, killing whoever he was ordered to.
B312's current assignment had him going to one of the colonies in order to eliminate an Insurrectionist group there. The Spartan would arrive via a UNSC Frigate designated as the UNSC Poltava.
Officially the Poltava's mission was to deliver supplies to far-off military installations. Any records of a Spartan being the sole occupant of her cryo bay had been given the Office of Naval Intelligence special treatment, complete and total deletion.
It was supposed to be a normal trip for the Frigate. No one will ever know why one minute all was calm and the next the Poltava was making an emergency landing on an unknown planet in uncharted space.
Remnant, The City of Atlas.
12:05 AM
General James Ironwood of the Atlesian Military hadn't planned on being woken up this early in the morning, but here he was, being briefed by one of his subordinates as they both walked to the war room. Apparently, an unidentified flying object had broken through the upper atmosphere and just crashed down in the frozen wilderness of Solitas.
James was peeved, to say the least. He hadn't even had his coffee yet, he had to rush to throw his uniform on and hurry to the war room to formulate a response to whatever they were dealing with.
The General passed through the gray metal of an automated door and into the war room. The large room was made of white metal and filled with numerous monitors that Atlesian officers were running back and forth between. In the center was a round table, it's surface sleek and black like a computer screen. The officers stopped what they were doing and stood at attention as the General entered.
Ironwood raised a hand up dismissively as he walked over to the center table.
"At ease. Status report."
One of his men joined him at the table. The man was middle-aged and had blonde hair cut to the regulation length. He wore the white pants, white button up shirt, blue vest and white overcoat standard for Military officers.
"General."
The man tapped the surface of the table and it lit up to show holographic projections of a three-dimensional map. He tapped a section of the map and it was highlighted red.
"The object made landfall here less than an hour ago. Reconnaissance drones just got a visual on it."
The officer swiped a hand across the table and a live feed from one of the flying recon drones popped up beside the map. It showed what looked like a massive ship sitting in the center of a large crater in a snowy clearing. The ship's hull was ripped open in several parts and it's bow peeked up out of the crater.
Ironwood narrowed his eyes at the feed.
"That isn't one of ours."
"Indeed it isn't, sir. Orders?"
"Find out who's it is. I want men out there to investigate as soon as possible."
"At once, General."
The man left and Ironwood was left staring at the footage of the mysterious ship, and to ponder it's origins.
The first thing Spartan-B312 felt as he was roused from cryo sleep was a stinging pain all over his body, side effects of wearing clothing into cryo. The Spartan tuned out the pain as he looked through the glass of his cryo tube into nothing but darkness. The tube remained shut.
'Power's out..'
The Wolf reached up and pulled the emergency release lever above the cryo tube's hatch. He could hear the seals pop as he pushed the hatch open and climbed out. Metal collided with metal as his boots hit the deck. B312 toggled the night vision feature of his Mjolnir Armor, boosting his already enhanced vision in low light environments.
'Need to figure out what's going on, and arm myself.'
The Spartan made his way over to the cryo bay exit. The power being out meant he had to force the hatch open, a task made trivial by his enhanced strength. Once through, he went right down the passageway, heading for the armory.
As the Spartan jogged across the deck he would occasionally pass corpses, sometimes Marines, sometimes part of the ship's crew. They were seemingly killed from an impact, some leaned against the bulkhead while he had to step over others that laid in his path.
Eventually the super soldier reached the Poltava's armory. Once more having to force open the hatch to enter, he looked around at the various gun racks. First he grabbed a sidearm, the trusty M6G. With M225 Semi-Armor-Piercing High-Explosive rounds, the M6G was great for dealing serious damage while still maintaining accuracy, a staple weapon for any servicemen. Now, for his primary weapon. The Spartan was trained to be comfortable with all firearms, but he had his favorites. The M392 Designated Marksman Rifle. The DMR was great for precision firing while being far less bulky than rifles like the SRS-99's; it's Full Metal Jacket Armor Piercing rounds didn't pack nearly the same punch, but in the right hands it could deal excellent damage. He was the right hands. Both guns were placed over the magnetic holsters on his thigh and back respectively. He made sure to grab some frag grenades too, and as much ammo as he could carry.
Being fully armed, the Spartan's next destination was the bridge to figure out what happened while he was in cryo.
After traversing several decks via climbing an elevator shaft, B312 arrived at the ship's bridge. Inside was a similar situation to the rest of the ship, meaning the bridge crew lie dead. The windows at the front of the bridge were shattered and snow was coming in through them.
'So we crashed.. Might be the sole survivor.'
He went over to the command terminal that was still being powered by emergency generators and tapped it to receive the damage report.
The hull was ruptured in several places, main generators were offline, so were comms, weapons and life support. It looked like he wasn't contacting anyone from here with the comms down. He would have to find another way to call for exfil.
There wasn't anything left for him on the Poltava. It was time to move. B312 went to the broken windows to look out. It was night and all he saw for miles was snow and trees. He looked to the ground below him and the drop it would take to reach it, judging the distance mentally.
Deciding he could handle the drop, the Spartan stepped forward and let himself fall several feet to the ground. He rolled with the fall and rose back to his feet before looking to the distant treeline.
'Too exposed out here, trees will provide cover.'
He began to jog towards the snow capped forest in the distance. The Mjolnir armor's sensors informed him that the temperature was well below freezing, but the suit would have no trouble protecting him from the elements.
His helmet's audio receptors picked up on something. A whirring noise of some kind.
The Spartan turned to see four aircrafts approaching from the East. The aircrafts were painted white and didn't match any UNSC designs he knew of. The Wolf went with the assumption they weren't friendly and picked up the pace. Going full speed, the Spartan reached the forest in no time and took cover in the trees.
He watched two of the strange airships land by the crashed Frigate while the other two circled, seemingly keeping a watch from the sky. Several figures disembarked the two airships. Dressed in white body armor of some kind, they looked almost military, but none that he'd ever seen.
'Better keep moving.'
B312 turned away from the crash to keep heading North, jogging through the forest.
Alone in unknown, likely dangerous territory. Some kind of humor could likely be found here, but he wasn't the one to find it. The Spartan just felt comfortable being in his element, even if it all seemed very odd.
The people of Remnant didn't know it yet, but a soldier of quite literally otherworldly skill had just arrived in their little corner of the universe they thought they were alone in.
The Wolf was on the prowl...