Noble: Survive
Chapter 1: At Ease, Noble
UNSC Pillar of Autumn
0200, September 3rd 2552
Kat tossed and turned. Sleep wasn't coming easy since boarding the Autumn, as her thoughts since escaping Reach raced. Partly because of her thoughts and simply because she'd missed them, she'd taken several long, long showers in her downtime. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed, and looked at her new quarters. Grey and utilitarian. It wasn't anything she wasn't used to, but it felt as alien to her in that moment as a Covenant ship. On a metal desk at the far wall, Kat had dumped three sets of tags in a tangle of metal links. Her own, Carter's, and Emile's.
It was silent on the ship, save for the ambient thrum of engines. After escaping Reach's orbit, the Pillar of Autumn made an emergency slipspace jump, and most of the crew went into cryo sleep. Kat had considered cryo as well, but decided not to for the time being. With a sigh, she stood up and changed out of her grey shorts and into a pair of fatigue pants, no longer content with the quiet. It took a little longer than usual as she was stuck with one arm for the time being, her bionic right arm being in for maintenance on the engineering deck.
Kat had always been a thinker. It was her keen mind and razor-sharp wits that had gotten her in to Noble team, and so having a distracted or otherwise unoccupied mind sat poorly with her, and laying in bed contemplating Reach sat even more poorly. She left her room, locking it with a key card, and began to wander. She had no destination in mind, she just had to go somewhere else.
As she wandered the halls, she encountered very few people, only a handful of skeleton crew operatives keeping things running as they navigated the many hallways of the Autumn. Her imposing figure drew their attention, as did the empty attachment socket at her right shoulder. They could stare all they liked. At this point, she didn't care. She visited the mess hall. Empty. Engineering was empty and quiet, and she could see where her own and Connor's armours were in pieces at the machinist stations.
She approached the gymnasium, where she heard noise. The sound of someone grunting, and then the heavy thud and rattle of plates hitting the padded deck at the weight rack. She angled her head around the door and saw her fellow Spartan laying on a weight bench, the bar discarded, loaded with nearly 800lbs of weight. He was covered in sweat as his formerly light grey tank top was soaked to dark grey. He stared at the ceiling as he huffed. She walked over to him. His short, dark hair was slick with sweat, and his pale blue eyes, changed due to augmentation, were laser focused on the ceiling above. He was pale too. Many Spartans were like that as they spent much more time than necessary in their armour. A scar on the right side of his face pulled his lips into a permanent grimace.
"Couldn't sleep?" She asked.
"No. You?" When he spoke, the right side of his mouth was stiffer than the rest.
She tapped the side of her head. "Too much going on up here."
"Wanna talk about it?" Connor offered. He didn't know how much help he could be, but Kat deserved that at least.
"You were there. We went through same thing. We'd just be treading old ground." She dismissed. Connor sat up and looked at her quietly. She narrowed her eyes after a few moments. "What?" without noticing, she angled her body so her bionic shoulder was away from view.
He sighed. "Sorry. I get you've got stuff on your mind, but I'm about the worst person to talk to. Not a good talker." Momentarily forgetting her defensiveness over her missing arm, Kat gave a humourless chuckle.
"And you think I am? We're really not too different like that." She said. "I didn't mean to shut you down, Connor. We were both there, but I guess it's selfish to think it was the same for both of us." She took a seat on another weight bench.
"I wouldn't worry about it. End of the day, we lost our teammates. But as long as we're alive, and if Jun is still out there, Noble team isn't dead yet." Connor said.
"And here I thought you were the eternal lone wolf." Kat said, this time allowing a small smile.
"I am what I need to be, when I need to be. Right now, I'm Noble Six. And I'm proud of that." He replied. There was a somewhat comfortable silence between the two. All that could be heard was Connor's breathing.
"I'm curious. I dug into your files before you joined us, and everything was covered in black ink. I'm not even sure if the details that weren't are even true. So tell me, who are you? Really?" Kat saw Connor's body stiffen for just a moment, and his face became more focused. She almost regretted asking, but she wouldn't be at real peace around him until she knew.
"Look..." he sighed, "You understand what you're asking me?"
"Don't I?" she challenged.
"You don't. You shouldn't know my name, you shouldn't have seen my face, I should have been recalled to ONI by now following debrief. It's only because of circumstance that I'm still here."
"So what? You're just going to disappear when the next ONI agent finds you?" Kat was getting frustrated.
"Maybe. But so could you, if I tell you too much. And it won't be to go doing ONI's dirty work again. You might not see the light of day again. I don't wanna risk that for you, Kat."
"I'll decide what risks I take, Lieutenant." Her tone was hard and uncompromising. Finally, Connor relented.
"Fine. My quarters. We'll talk there. I've swept it for bugs and found nothing, and I suggest you do the same." He said. They left the gym and went to Connor's quarters. Once the door was closed, Six locked it. Neither of them sat down. "My room is a security blind spot. No one can see or hear anything here."
"How? You haven't been here a day?"
Connor smirked. "ONI, remember?"
Kat shook her head, not sure what she should have expected. She motioned for him to carry on.
"There's a lot in there that, even though it's my information, I'm not cleared to access. It's classified even to me. ONI keeps a tight leash on its assets." Kat didn't look pleased, but he continued. "Connor is my name. That much is true. I was born November tenth, 2528. My home world was Jericho VII, glassed in 2532. I know nothing about my family; who they were, what they did. Nothing. I was brought into Beta Company of the Spartan-III program when I was approached by an ONI agent on a refugee ship in late 2532. I was pulled from Beta Company for special assignments in 2540." He stopped talking.
"And...?"
"I just thought, it's likely that we met before I joined Noble." He said.
"Irrelevant right now. Is there anything else?" Kat said impatiently.
"I was given special tasks as one of ONI's Lone Wolves to hunt down and eliminate Insurrectionist leaders, key members, and shut down operations. Made whole cells disappear. I was also sent to do the same to the Covenant. You ever heard of Head Hunters?"
"Only whispers. Why?"
"I was part of a Head Hunter pair, very briefly anyway. I was partnered with Uriah-A041. We mad a whole Insurrectionist cell disappear over night. Except, it wasn't as simple as get in, slit some throats, get out. Their leader was a Spartan."
"What?" Kat said incredulously.
"A deserter from Alpha Company. Mikhail-A176. Styled himself as some kind of pirate king. Ambushing trade convoys, attacking mining stations, raiding supply depots. Hostage ransom. Had a small fleet under his command and a whole sector of space under his control. It took us months to slip through all of his security and causing general havoc with excruciatingly planned sabotage. Eventually we found him, but he'd been expecting something. Uriah was killed, but so was Mikhail. He was a traitor, but he'd have been a damn good Spartan if he'd have stayed." Connor unconsciously rubbed a spot where his left shoulder and pectoral met.
"It's no wonder then that your records look so incomplete." Kat said finally.
"Yeah. Someone's gotta do the jobs no one else will." Connor said with a shrug. "So, what about you?"
"What about me?" Kat cocked an eyebrow.
"What's your story?"
"I suppose it's only fair I tell you." Kat said quietly. "New Harmony. My family was military. Both parents served, and my grandmother was a retired General. Father died on Harvest, and cancer took my mother. I was born in 2530 and got enlisted in August of 2537. Battle of New Harmony. Heard of it?" Kat said.
"Yeah. Heavy civilian casualties but it was a UNSC victory." Connor replied. "Your grandmother raised you then?"
"Read that in my file?"
"No. Just inference." He stared at the wall just behind Kat. "Must be nice. Knowing who your family were. Even during training, I didn't bond with the other recruits. I joined teams, even led them but..." he licked his lips, "The closest thing to family I had..." he trailed off.
"Noble." Kat finished, a sad frown on her face.
"Yes."
"Well, you said it yourself. As long as we're alive and fighting, Noble lives too. We'll find Jun, wherever he is." Kat reassured, getting a stiff smile from Connor.
"We stick together then. Whatever, wherever. If you've got my back, then I've got yours." Connor said.
"I'd shake your hand on that, but..." She shrugged her right shoulder.
"For someone so smart, that was kinda dumb." He chuckled and offered his right hand. She took it with her left and shook.
"You're right. Sorry." She smiled then.
The following afternoon, Connor and Kat visited the engineering deck. With sleep not forthcoming, they'd spent the night talking. For the first time, they both felt like they were really getting to know each other. Fighting on Reach, moving from place to place, battle to battle, any downtime that had been afforded to them was spent talking strategy. Connor, for his part, had slowly befriended Emile in those times. Gallows humour was something Connor particularly enjoyed, and so would exchange quips with Noble Four. Kat was too valuable, and thus too busy to talk about anything outside of planetary defence, when she wasn't having a routine back and forth with Carter.
The machine shop was loud as expected, as armour, weapons, and vehicles in the expansive maintenance bays were being worked on. Technicians and engineers moved about as they fetched tools, requested parts, and passed components between each other. Kat had come for the express purpose of checking in on her bionic arm. Connor had noticed that while fighting in Aszod, the arm was pretty stiff and made a noticeable whine at the joints.
"Between constant fighting and no maintenance, what did you expect?" She'd said.
A technician spotted them, his face obscured by a mask and wearing a blue, full body suit and boots.
"Spartans." He saluted. Both Spartans nodded to him. He looked at Kat. "Your arm is still in for repair, ma'am. The joint mechanics need replacing since we found so much debris in the sockets. The manipulators will also need realignment and calibrating. They were pretty bent up. The electronics were fine though." The technician reported.
"How long?" Kat asked with no small degree of irony on her part, as she usually gave frustrated muttering whenever she received that question.
"Couple days, tops. We've got all the equipment needed to machine the parts here. We're just drafting them up digitally. I think you'll like the improvements, ma'am."
"I requested repair, not improvement." Kat said. Connor nudged her.
"Don't be so quick to turn your nose up at them. I'd take it, personally." Noble Six said. "And our armour?"
"Mostly superficial damage. The hydro-gel layers inside the tech suits will need replacing. Though, depending on what we find, we might just have to replace the tech suits entirely. But other than that, they'll just need a little repair, buffering out the plasma scoring, and some fresh paint." The technician said.
"Hold the paint." Connor said.
"Seconded." Kat concurred. Without any communication, both of them agreed that freshening up their armour would feel improper. They wanted to keep the little scars on their armour as a reminder of Reach.
A few days had passed, and Kat's arm had been returned to her. As she and Connor sat at a table in the mess hall, she was quite enjoying the new flexibility it had. Its movements were far smoother than her old one, even without all of the dust and grit stuck in the joints. It was responsive as well, without the few milliseconds delay it previously had between nerve inputs. She knew her old arm had that problem, but she'd never been allowed to tinker with it.
"Looks good. How's it feel?" Connor asked. The motive servos of her arm were near silent, totally opposite to the low hum, then agitated whine that it had at the beginning, then the end of the Reach campaign.
"A lot better. Finger articulation will provide much better fine motor function. I'll be able to get a lot more done thanks to this." She said giving him a very natural-looking thumbs up.
"Good. You're welcome, by the way." He said, an odd look on his face.
"For what?"
"My suggestion."
"Oh. You're going to act smug about that?" She didn't look impressed.
"Damn right I am. You're seriously about to tell me you'd have kept the old one? I'm no expert but even I could see that thing was outdated." He said. Kat looked thoughtful for a moment.
"I guess. Even with all the time I'd been using it, I still kept dropping things with it. Or the fingers would seize up. That's why you'd see me just punch things with it. It was better as a club than a fine tool." She said.
"And you still managed all that? That's impressive." Connor admitted. The number of situations she'd gotten them out of with her technical skills was too many to count. Though, he hadn't realised how much she actually struggled with the arm until just then.
"Anger only works for so long. When I tried being patient, things got better. A little, anyway." She shrugged.
"Wanna test it out? See if that trigger discipline has improved." Connor stood.
"What's that supposed to mean? You insulting me, Lieutenant?" Kat growled and also stood, looking Noble Six in the eye.
"What? No. Never. Unless you've got a reason to feel insulted, Lieutenant Commander." There was that stiff-lipped smile again.
"Get your ass to the range. I'll show you trigger discipline." She went on ahead, not waiting around for her fellow Spartan. Connor sighed. Social graces were never his strong suit, and neither was humour. However, with the absence of the other members of Noble team, all of which Kat had stronger ties to than himself, he took it upon himself to be a support system for her. He was going to do whatever he could to keep her spirits up as best he could. He just hoped he could keep himself together as well.
Kat was a crack shot with a pistol. Her new bionic arm only served to emphasise this point. Head shot after head shot on hostage targets. She tracked moving targets perfectly and snapped off pinpoint shots, never deviating from the target. Timed weapon drills were a breeze for her.
In the next lane over, Connor was engaged in his own exercises with a DMR as bullets streaked downrange. A small crowd of interested marines watched them with rapt attention, admiring the Spartans and cheering for them. Others took bets on who would achieve better time or have a higher accuracy rating.
"How's that for trigger discipline, Lieutenant? Good enough for you?" Kat called over to Connor's lane. She wore a triumphant smirk as the score counter at the end of the lane read she had a 98% accuracy rating. Connor looked at his own. 97%. Damn.
"Lucky that time. Go again." Connor challenged, now switching to a pistol to match Noble Two.
"How's the fit, Spartans?" The same technician as before asked the two newly armoured Spartans. Both of them flexed their limbs, readjusting to their Mjolnir plate. They'd forgotten how uncomfortable it had gotten by the time they'd first boarded the Autumn, with the hydro-gel losing its cushioning properties, leading to a lot of chafing and a serious lack of impact absorption. Their suit bios had received an update, and the more serious scuffs and burns had been buffered and smoothed out. The tech suits had been completely replaced.
"It's good. Feels like new." Connor said as he squeezed and released his hands, feeling the extra strength in his limbs.
"Everything's fine with mine. The new arm integrates with the armour perfectly." Kat said. Her left arm sported a new addition. A later model tac-pad with a state-of-the-art mapping and communications suite that interfaced with her Mjolnir's systems.
"Ordinarily we'd run some more systems diagnostics and calibrate your shield units. Nothing major, but the new update to your suit bios will make your shields just a tiny bit more efficient, is all. Unfortunately, none of us here are shield specialists, and our one is in cryo right now." The technician explained.
"That's fine. It can wait. I was planning on entering cryo anyway." Connor replied. "Kat?"
"Nothing better to do." She said with a shrug.
September 18th, 2552
Soell System
Time began to flow once again. One by one, the crew of the Pillar of Autumn awoke from cryo sleep, roused by the A.I Cortana. Marines, ODSTs, functionaries, and Captain Keyes returned to their duties as the Pillar of Autumn approached the end of its journey through slipspace.
Inside his armour, Noble Six slowly regained consciousness as the door to his pod hinged open and cold vapour billowed out on to the floor. Stiffly, he pulled himself out of the pod and on to his feet, stepping out into the surrounding chamber. Next to his pod, Kat's opened and she followed suit, stretching her stiff limbs after joining Connor on the deck.
"I don't like cryo. Always feel like I've got lead in my limbs afterwards." Kat croaked as she finished stretching with her arms above her head, pivoting her torso side to side.
Connor rolled his shoulders. "Yeah. Can't say I'm a fan, myself."
They exited the cryo bay and out into the now extremely active halls of the ship, where countless troops moved like a swarm of ants to get to their stations. There was a lot of excited chatter among friends despite everyone there coming off of the fall of Reach. They were just grateful to be alive and able to see their friends and comrades again. Most saluted the Spartans as they passed on their way to report to the bridge, and they spared them cursory nods.
On the bridge, Captain Keyes stared out into to almost headache inducing rush of colour and motion that was slipspace, antiquated pipe in hand. There, on a small projector pedestal, was Cortana. She was the A.I believed to be the key to mankind's salvation. A mental clone of Catherine Halsey. She was alerted to the presence of both Spartans as they arrived on the bridge and stood to attention, snapping salutes to Keyes. He turned and looked at them, saluting in return.
"At ease, Noble." Both Spartans placed their hands behind their backs. "I'm glad to see you both here. Without you two, we'd have never gotten off of Reach."
"Respectfully, sir. It's Noble Four, Emile, we should be thanking." Noble Six said. Keyes nodded.
"You're right, my apologies. But the fact remains that your team's courage and sacrifice is what got Cortana here and us in the air. It's reassuring to have such fine soldiers with us." Keyes commended. He let them go soon after, letting them go about whatever routines they needed.
September 19th 2552
The ship rumbled violently and alarms blared almost deafeningly. After exiting slipspace in the Soell system, the Pillar of Autumn came under attack from a Covenant fleet that had arrived before them. They were convinced they'd lost them, but the fleet of Particular Justice was dogged in their pursuit of the Autumn. Plasma cannons fired, slamming their payloads into the human vessel. Fighters and boarding craft painted violet trails in the void as they rapidly approached.
Aboard the ship, the two members of Noble team geared up, snatching their preferred weapons from the armoury. The crew was in chaos as they scrambled to their battle stations, while marines organised themselves behind makeshift barricades when the warning of boarding pods had been given.
Over their shared comms, Keyes spoke. "Spartans, I've just received a report that the gunnery deck has been breached and Covenant forces are flooding in. Get down their and wipe the Covies out. The guns can't be allowed to go offline."
"Sir." Both Spartans affirmed as they moved. However, their path was anything but simple. On the way, they encountered large amounts of alien combatants, mostly Grunts led by Elites. Reports of Jackals running raids on other decks were coming in, their piratical nature present even now. For now though, Connor and Kat were still several decks up from their destination, and would have to fight every step of the way.
Connor ran at full tilt, sprinting past a group of marines as they down overlapping fields of fire. Grunts died in droves, but that was to be expected. Jackals further back picked off the rank and file whenever one was caught reloading and out of cover. The Spartan smashed into their ranks, first gunning down the sniper Jackals before shattering the skull of a Grunt with his fist. Grabbing it, he broke the methane tank on its back and threw it as it began to spiral out of control. It exploded, killing several of its fellows.
Kat joined him, springing off of a piece of low cover and slammed feet first onto an Elite Minor's shoulders. Quickly, she backfilled off it and caught is mandibles with one foot, breaking then and sending teeth flying. She'd only landed for a fraction of a second before charging into it with her shoulder and pressed her pistol to its stomach, firing off four shots, killing it. She snatched up its plasma rifle and fired into the scattering crowd of Grunts.
"Marines, move up!" Noble Six ordered. The soldiers did so, providing covering fire while the Spartans advanced. Corridors and hallways wound all through out the ship, creating all kinds of kill zones and choke points, not all of them on their side.
A group of Elites had occupied a section of the ship that lay in Connor and Kat's path. They wasted no time getting into the main room, where several Ultras stood.
"Ultras. Watch out." Kat warned.
"Got it. Be careful." They spit up, covering one side of the room each. One Ultra bellowed out at them and pointed. Connor vaulted up to a gantry above, getting up close with the first. He swatted away a fist, punching the Elite and popped its shield. He took his pistol from his thigh and pressed the barrel under its jaw and fired. He threw the corpse over the railing and engaged the second.
Kats bionic hand struck hard. Not only did the Ultra's shield break, but the combat harness beneath had a fist sized dent punched into it. The alien staggered back gasping. She spun it around, took a plasma grenade from its hip and activated it, only to stick it to the Elite's back and threw all of her weight and force into a push. Stumbling and trying to right itself, the white-armoured alien ran into two of its brothers and was annihilated along with them even the plasma grenade exploded.
One of the Elites, a different one that the others, roared out a series of commands in its guttural tongue. Its armour was sleek and black, and the other Covenant deferred to it. Both Connor and Kat recognised it as spec-ops. The unspoken agreement came, both knowing that spec-ops were only sent when there was a particular objective they had, and if one was here, between the bridge and the gunnery deck, then neither implications were good. Either it was here to destroy the guns through sabotage or demolition, or it was on its way to kill Captain Keyes.
"We need to take that one out." Connor said, snapping the neck of an Elite after grappling with it and using it as a shield against oncoming fire.
"Well, you're the assassin. I'll keep the others off you." Kat's plasma rifle cut down a Grunt, and mimicking what Connor had done before, smashed the methane tank on its back and directed its volatile flight towards the other aliens. It exploded and broke the shields of three Elites, and with both plasma rifle and pistol, finished them off. She took a run-up and leapt at an Ultra, planting one titanium plated foot in its gut, and on the recovery, smashed the back of her bionic fist into its head. The strange metal of its ornate helmet caved in and its body crumpled to the gantry.
Connor had mopped up a team of Jackals with a single grenade, the explosion destroying a portion of the gantry and shaking the rest of it so hard that sections of it started to pull free of the wall, their securing bolts sheered and broken. The other Covenant on the gantry lost their footing, mostly Grunts and Jackals. Chuckling, an unsettling habit that the rest of Noble had found he had when killing, he put bullets through their skulls.
Two streams of plasma bolts burned towards him as the spec-ops Elite moved, pushing through Grunts and knocking some to the ground. Noble Six dove behind cover, his DMR on his back, and knife and pistol in hand. Up above, Kat threw a dead Elite over the railing and on top of the Covenant below. Grunts and Jackals were either crushed beneath great, dead weight, or knocked back on to the deck plates by those less fortunate.
It was then Connor sprang out of cover. He was a flurry of motion. Limbs blurred as his knife slashed and stabbed, his pistol fired and clubbed skulls. The spec-ops moved back, distancing itself from the Spartan while its plasma rifles bloomed. Then, seeing the Spartan coming closer, it changed tactics, instead lurching forward and chopped down with one gun while still firing with the other.
Connor found himself on one knee, his shield unit rapidly beeping in warning. One rifle had chopped down on his left shoulder, and the other had burst down his shield. As pain crawled through his shoulder, he looked up at the Elite looking down on him with soulless black eyes. Then, with her pistol firing, Kat had jumped from the gantry and on top of the Elite. It staggered back into a wall where far shadows largely hid its hulking form. Connor quickly stood, kicking off the hand of a Grunt that had grabbed his leg.
"Connor, you alright?" Kat asked, giving him a brief glance before returning her gaze to the shadows.
"Yeah. I over extended. Thanks for the assist." He took his DMR off his back and levelled it at where the Elite had gone. "Spec-ops. Active camo, most likely. Stay alert."
Just then, the ignition flare of a plasma grenade lit up the darkness and was lobbed at them. Connor grabbed Kat's arm and pulled her out of the way as it was meter inches from connecting with her armour. They hit the ground, Connor landing on his back. For just an instant, he could see the distortion where the Elite's body warped light around it like a statue of blown glass. He fired at it, but only two bullets hit as it retreated further in, only stopping to hurl a final insult in its strange language.
"It's disengaged, after it!"
Okan 'Drantak growled as he ran. He hadn't been expecting demons aboard, let alone two in the same place. He stuck to the shadows as befitted his training, but that was easy as power to this section of the ship had been cut off with only life support remaining. Around him, red and yellow lights flickered.
He had been sent to assassinate any important human personnel, specifically anyone who could keep the ship running, and cripple it from the inside. However, his duties weren't just assassination. He had free reign to do whatever be believed necessary, and so he had been on his way to the gunnery deck. They'd had to alternate their course when boarding as the ship guns had come close to shooting them out of the void, so drastic turns and weaves had to be taken in their flight pattern. When they boarded it had been between decks, so Okan and his entourage, who had rendezvoused with other boarders, took a few minutes to deliberate on their objective.
Of course, there were disagreements, with the Elites wanting to find and kill the Captain, the Grunts wanting look for anything they could use for methane infusion, and the Jackals wanting steal quite literally everything, even trying to convince the others to keep the ship intact to either convert it or scrap it. Fighting had almost broken out, but that was quickly stopped by the Elites. Okan, for his part, was quiet for the most part. The glory of killing the human Captain was extremely tempting, and would make him look good in the eyes of the Prophets. But, disabling the ship's guns was the more pragmatic option, making the ship's capture far easier. It was only when he was about to make his decision, the demons attacked.
He'd never seen anything so quick and brutal, so efficient in the art of death dealing. At first, he didn't even know what was happening, seeing his Sangheili brothers die, thrown dead over the railings and blown up with their own explosives. It was when he caught sight of the one in dark armour, the soulless pale void of its visor looking at him, he acted. He'd never fought one before, and he relished the chance. But he was young, and while he had raw talent for battle and special operations, the utter lack of fear the demons displayed shook him.
That strike he'd delivered had been one fuelled by feat, and Okan hated that. Despised it. No Sangheili warrior worth his salt should do anything out of fear, ever! And yet it had stopped the first demon in its tracks. The second attacking him was just as startling as its feet landed on his shoulders, the weight of it coming down on him almost making his knees buckle. If that had happened, he would surely have been killed. It felt to him that the angle the demon had hit him was just enough that it knocked him back rather than down. Still, even without being knocked down, one more pistol shot would have broken his shield and left him utterly vulnerable.
In moment, when he had managed to escape, Okan 'Drantak felt as though he was not just lucky, but blessed. He had faced two demons and survived. Surely that was the will of the gods. If that were truly the case, then the gods had a purpose in mind for him. He felt a rush of excitement then. They must want him to be the one to kill those two demons, and they were showing him what he was up against. Now he just had to acquire the means to carry out their will.
He set personal glory aside, choosing instead to go to the gunnery deck. There, he would find a way to quickly and efficiently kill the crew there. And he believed he had just the method.
"Kat, anything on your tracker?"
"Nada. Either this Elite has some kind of advanced camo unit, or it's taking serious pains to avoid detection. But what did you expect from spec-ops?"
"Dammit. We'll go to the gun deck regardless. My gut tells me that's where we'll find our friend." As the two ran through the halls, something occurred to Noble Two.
"Something's off." She came to a halt and looked up and down the long corridor. Connor also stopped. Her night vision highlighted the surroundings. "Look. Notice anything?"
"Yeah... no plasma scoring on the walls. No bodies or blood either. Totally untouched. Weird." Noble Six said. Where they had been on other decks, there were marines, barricades, and all kinds of damage from plasma and bullets. However, there was nothing there on the way to the gunnery deck.
They took a lift down to their destination, and when the exited the lift. They found carnage. Not the kind that was signified by exchanged of gunfire, though there were spent casings and bullet holes in the walls, but the kind done through shadowy means. Crewmen were strewn about, their necks broken, spines shattered, limbs twisted. It was like something huge and very strong had hunted them down, corralled them and slaughtered them with its bare hands.
Kat knelt down next to one of the corpses and inspected it.
"Severe head and neck trauma. Clean break. It's consistent with an ambush attack that Elite spec-ops have used since the war started. It's probably close by." She stood with her pistol raised.
"Stick together. Last thing we want is to get picked off by this thing." Connor said, getting a nod from Kat. As they navigated the halls, they found more corpses.
Okan waited patiently within the main section of the gunnery deck. He'd spent some time killing the crew down there, and took some hostage. He'd placed high yield explosives on the ammo banks, and just waited for the demons to arrive. There he would detonate the explosives, and send the whole deck out in to the void. He wasn't worried though. His helmet came with its own EVA suite for hard vacuums, so being vented would be no problem, and the jump pack he'd come with would help him get back to the ship. He relished the chance to watch the demons float off into the cold void, to die alone and never be seen or heard from again. He wondered if they could feel fear. If that cold, lonely death would make even them tremble and beg. There was only one way to find out.
He cast a hateful glare at the gathered humans behind him. They flinched and clutched together as the towering, black-clad Sangheili growled. He'd have rather killed them there and then, but he'd heard reports of these demons actually caring for the humans, and so had determined that to make them hesitate, he would need these humans alive. For now, anyway. It was no use trying to speak to them. They wouldn't understand, and he had no desire to use their base, foul tongue. So he resorted to growls and threatening gestures to make them cower.
All he had to do was wait.
"You know, with this many of the crew dead this entire deck is inoperable." Kat said flatly. They'd determined that the bodies were essentially acting as a trail.
"We have our orders. You know what I'd much rather be doing" Connor replied.
"Given the choice you'd already be on one of their ships." She chuckled at that.
"Got it in one."
"And you'd need someone to watch your back."
"Not necessary, but appreciated." He'd already taken out a Covenant cruise mostly on his own. Before Jorge died. He was certain he could do it again. He wasn't rated hyper-lethal for nothing.
"Lieutenant." She said dryly.
"Right, right. My apologies, ma'am." They'd promised to stick together, after all. "I'm still not getting anything on my tracker. You?"
"Nothing. Totally dead." Kat replied grimly. They continued, sweeping their weapons wherever they looked. "Wait," she said sharply, bringing the both to a stop, "Friendly blips."
"I see them. They're clustered up. Ordinarily they'd be spread out at their stations." Connor said.
"Let's move. Form up on the door." Kat said as they came to a single wide door, the panel next to it dim and flickering. "Locked. And it doesn't look like it was done gently. Give me a moment." She pulled a cable from her tac-pad and removed the front casing of the panel, exposing the inner workings and an interface port that Kat stuck the jack of her cable into.
"Got you covered." Connor said. It took a couple of minutes, but Noble Two quickly got the door open. They moved in, careful of anything that could be out of place. And out of place was what they found. At the far end of the room was a group of crewmen, all huddled together. Their stations on either side of the room, separated by a six-foot aisle were empty. Both Spartans' senses tingled, their instincts honed over years combat and training screaming at them.
"This feels like a trap" Kat didn't manage to say more as she took a heavy kick to the gut and she flew put the room, landing heavily on her back. Connor turned, seeing the Elite in black armour de-cloak. It grabbed him by the head and pressed a plasma rifle to his stomach. He dropped his DMR and threw his head to the side and twisted his hips, breaking the Elite's grip and sidestepped the plasma rifle before it fired. He punched the Elite, pulled its head down by its neck and kneed it in the chest. It grabbed Connor by his legs and ran, slamming the Spartan into the wall, denting it heavily. His grip broke, and the Elite brought both hands down in a hammer strike, only to hit Noble Six's crossed forearms. He kicked out, once in the stomach, next in the chest.
Connor pushed himself away from the wall and drew his knife. He heard the Elite chuckling.
"It was worth the effort." It said, its voice a raspy rumble. "Well worth it. You truly test me, demon."
"So, you lizards can talk? Good to know." Connor replied. The Elite ignored him.
"I am Okan 'Drantak. Chosen of the gods to kill you and the blue one. I worked hard to bring you here, demons." It walked over to the crewman, certain that with how thrown off the Spartans would be, they would hesitate to attack. Not while it was near hostages. "I've heard tell of your care for your lessers. You protect them, save them, die for them. But I wonder, what will you do here?"
It looked down and gestured to the aisle between the computer banks. It was made of several inch thick panes of armoured glass. It would take considerable firepower to break it, and even most high-powered man-portable weapons would have an exceedingly hard time.
"I will not waste my time explaining to you. Your death comes for you. I, however, will live on to glory." He pulled a device from his back and held it up. A single glowing symbol, and activation switch, was just millimetres under his thumb. "Die."
Heat. Light. Noise. Explosive decompression as air rushed out of the deck. Weightlessness as he was pulled out with the crewmen and Okan.
"Connor!" Kat shouted as she hung on to the doorway, pushing against the force of decompression. "Come in! Come in, Lieutenant! She took a step and looked down into the void, seeing nothing but a field of debris below. Whenever she was worried about something, it was usually a repair she'd done, or whether a signal was being tracked, or if a piece of equipment worked properly. Very, very rarely, did she worry about other people. There was little she could do for civilians, and unless expressly ordered, it wasn't her job to safeguard them. It was to kill the things threatening them. Soldiers knew the risks, Spartans more so. But with Connor, Noble Six, that was different. They survived Reach together. Where all others on their team died, with Jun's fate uncertain, they lived on. It was because of him that she even lived past New Alexandria. She'd lost everyone else. She didn't want to lose him too.
"I'm alright." Connor's voice came through a series of pants. He sounded hurt. "Got eyes on the Elite?"
"Negative." She said. She managed to purge any emotion from her voice. "Where are you?"
"Under the ship. Hit some debris and it stopped me floating away. I'm gonna try and make my way back in."
"Hurry up then. There's still the rest of the ship to deal with. I'll report the situation the Keyes. Make sure to stay in contact."
"Will do."
Noble Six was surrounded by an ocean of debris. Metal plates, people, crates, fuel tanks, and an assortment of thinks blown out from other sections of the ship that had either been vented or shorn off by plasma batteries. Longswords battled with Banshees and Seraphs, chasing each other through the void. What he'd give to be in a Sabre again. He pushed off a metal plate, grabbed a crate and swung himself around on it. Then he grabbed the limp body of a crewman, gave it a final look, then pushed off, getting closer and closer to the Autumn.
Suddenly, a hand gripped his leg and he looked down, seeing the Elite with its eye slit glowing faint white staring up at him. It pulled him down and thrust itself up to leverage itself toward the ship, intent on doodling the Spartan to an eternity in space. Connor grabbed a hold of it, looping his arms around Okan's neck and they both tumbled through space and slammed into different pieces of debris. Connor's shield took hits, the bar on his HUD lowering in chunks.
They both landed on a huge, heavy piece of hull armour. The impact forced Connor to let go of the Elite, who rolled over and raised its plasma rifle. The Spartan rolled to avoid the shots, but felt several hit him. He pulled his pistol from his thigh and returned fire, lighting up Okan's shield. He just needed to break it, and then he could smash that helmet and kill the Elite. Its back-mounted thrusters lit up. As he jetted towards Connor, the Spartan braced for impact before the Elite's great weight slammed into him.
Now further from the Autumn than ever, the amount of debris that could be used to return was thinning out. However, something clicked in Connor's mind. This Elite was a good fighter, he could see that. It cunning too, but there was something about its movements that bothered him. Most other Elites were a lot more calculating in their battles, whereas this Elite, Okan, wasn't. Its hand to hand combat was all about brute force and grappling. Would work against most un-augmented humans, but not against a Spartan. It was then that he realised that this Elite was young and inexperienced. An excellent raw talent perhaps, but with little of the experience to back it up.
The Spartan threw his weight back as they grappled, angling them until his back faced the Autumn. Then, slipping and arm free. He smashed a fist into Okan's back over and over, burst the shield and then struck one of the thrusters, igniting it through malfunction. It propelled them both back towards the embattled Autumn, and Connor drew a second knife and rammed it into the Elite's neck where it joined the shoulder. It let go of him, and Connor kicked the flailing alien away. He watched it spin away into the dark.
Eventually he made it back inside the Autumn through the same hole he'd been vented through. He clutched his side and leaned against a wall as various objects floated around the empty halls of the gun deck. He'd hit something hard on the way out, but he didn't know what. He definitely felt like he'd done some serious soft tissue damage.
"Kat, come in. Kat?" He spoke. A few seconds passed.
"Connor? Finally, I was wondering when you'd show up. You alright? That Elite dead?" she spoke, unable to hide the relief in her voice.
"It's dead. I'm a little bit banged up, but I'll live. Where are you?"
"I told the Captain about the gun deck. Called me back up to the bridge. You gonna be alright getting here?"
"I'll be there, don't worry. Has Keyes said anything about the Cole Protocol?"
"Negative. He has something else in mind. And we've got some help."
"What help?"
"A Spartan-II. Just so happens to be the only other Spartan given the designation 'hyper-lethal'." He could hear her smirk. So she'd been digging a little more had she?
"On my way."
Another chapter done. I wanted to have Connor and Kat bond a bit while there was a moment's peace. I want to assuage any worries about Spartan-IIIs being nerfed or just being way weaker than Spartan-IIs. They're not. If anything, Spartan-IIIs are just as good or even better on average based on a few factors. And Noble Six and Kat aren't just any Spartan-IIIs, they're CAT-2 Spartan-IIIs. Picked out for being exceptional and possessing qualities that others just didn't that make them more comparable to their older siblings. I think the whole Spartan-IIs being the best thing comes from how much we see of them and their feats when compared to the IIIs, and the amount of named, important Spartan-II characters there are. They are the posterchild of the franchise when it comes to super soldiers. That's fair and all, but the IIIs I feel are underrated simply because they're not that prominent in comparison. Their augmentations are pretty much identical with the exception of the catalytic thyroid implant if I remember it right. They trained under Spartans, and trained longer under more brutal conditions under Kurt-051's direct supervision. So no need to worry about me undercutting them. I forgot where it was stated, but it was said that the only difference between IIs and IIIs was experience.
Also, new Elite character. I've got plans for him, so this won't be the last we see of Okan. Now, onto review replies:
Kodiak75: I'm glad you enjoyed it and thanks for reviewing.
JCtherebel: Happy you liked it. Thanks for the review.
Masterchief1229: Thanks for the review and your interest in the story.
Guest: No worries. As I've addressed in the after word of this chapter, I'm fully aware of how good Spartan-IIIs are. They're actually my favourite Spartan generation, hence why I like Reach and Noble team so much. Thanks for the review.