1600 hours, September 16th, 2542
Alluvion. Low orbit.
John-117 was falling from orbit.
Again.
He'd hit the ground in a few minutes, according to his suit's computer. The MJOLNIR's gel layer was ready to pressurize just before impact, the newly-installed kinetic barriers were still online after having kept the re-entry plasma at bay for so long, and his pressure seals still held. With his ability to maneuver being limited at the moment, all he could do now was wait, wait and think. After all, the Covenant were jamming their long-range communications, making any attempts to send a message pointless. Besides, even if he tried to brute-force a transmission through, the Covenant would home in on his signal, and linking up with friendly forces would be hard enough without having to evade Covenant air patrols.
It had seemed like a simple search-and-destroy op at the start. They had been deployed to destroy a hard target on Alluvion, one of many worlds rescued or retaken by the UNSC since the start of Operation: CRUSADER - the fight to retake the Outer Colonies.
Although… it hadn't been the UNSC, had it? It had been a joint effort involving humanity's new allies from the other side of the galaxy. The turians had deployed eleven thousand soldiers to the planet as the escorting asari flotilla drove the Covenant ships away from the planet.. The turian troops were detached from the 13th Palaven Legion, a formation that had earned a reputation for high-risk orbital assaults. After landing, they had linked up with the 101st Independent ODST Regiment, nicknamed "the Screaming Eagles", and secured the planetary capital. The combined force then proceeded to go on the offensive, while the asari ships in orbit destroyed those Covenant strongholds that had their shield generators disabled by asari commandos in daring raids.
This was a well-executed combined arms operation; the disparate units from different militaries were working well together, and this served as a good example of what the Coalition could accomplish, especially now that humanity was able to catch a breath. With the Citadel Expeditionary Force having for the time being taken over much of the combat operations in the invasion corridor, the UNSC was consolidating and redeploying most of its forces in the Inner Colonies and working hard at recovering its combat power. The results were already showing: for the first time since the war began, the UNSC was producing more warships than it was losing, and the ratio would continue to improve when the new shipyards were brought online. The Army and the Marines were also enjoying the fruits of the alliance: new units were being raised, and the existing formations received new equipment and broke out their best gear out of storage. With the production of many types of parts and components now being outsourced to the Citadel manufacturers, the heavier vehicles such as Grizzlies and Vultures, previously carefully hoarded and only deployed to provide a decisive advantage over the enemy forces, were now becoming a common sight once again. All this was good news to John, even though the UNSC relying so heavily on alien military aid - because that was exactly that, aid - would take some getting used to.
Currently, the only human forces still engaging the Covenant were the Helljumpers and select regiments of the Marines and Army that remained combat-effective after over a decade of attrition. Now almost universally equipped with the hardsuits provided by the Citadel's lend lease, with the finest being modified for use by the ODST's. These were supported by the best vehicles the UNSC could produce, the UNSC's ground forces were finally able to contest the Covenant without requiring gross numerical superiority. And as the UNSC adapted to the new paradigm, this would only continue. The first prototypes for Semi-Powered armor for ODST's would soon be deployed, and the first UNSC hardsuits were hopefully not far behind.
Even his Spartans had changed in this new age. Their MJOLNIR suits have been upgraded with the newly available technologies; the kinetic barriers were a welcome boost to the suit's survivability, while the newly-installed omni-tools and micro fabricators, most of their functions tied into the Spartans' neural laces for convenience, provided a degree of battlefield support. Moreover, thanks to the Citadel's intervention pushing the Covenant back, the routine of desperate defensive battles until the Covenant started glassing gave way to a series of back-to-back offensive operations. Spartan teams were being deployed from planet to planet, crushing Covenant strongpoints so the turians could roll up and complete their objective,
Questions were being asked, though, and keeping the Spartans a secret from the Citadel was proving to be an almost impossible prospect due to their heavy use of drones. While combat drones were nothing new to the UNSC, the CEF doctrine took them to the next level, flooding the battlefield with thousands of surveillance and combat support drones, all recording information for use by the troops. Naturally, they inevitably captured images of Spartans in action. A compromise had been reached in the end: the Citadel would not inquire into the Spartans, and the UNSC wouldn't compromise battlefield effectiveness for the sake of secrecy. The official story the UNSC gave was that the Spartans were a special forces outfit consisting of augmented operatives using experimental powered armor, their true identities classified in order to protect them from retaliation by the enemies of the UNSC. It was even technically true… mostly.
This was how Blue Team came to be deployed to Alluvion. The Covenant made themselves at home on this world, building deep bunkers and shielded fortresses. After the loss of several commando teams Matriarch Aethyta, the commander of the CEF ground forces, had asked for Spartan assistance in breaking into Covenant bases. In light of this, NAVSPECWAR had deployed Blue Team as the first Spartan team to cooperate with alien special forces.
Upon arriving in low orbit above Alluvion, Blue Team had prepared to take a Pelican for a suborbital hop towards their target, using the deployment of the turian garrison that would be stationed on the planet - until the UNSC could deploy a garrison of their own - as cover. John had been called aside by the leader of the asari squad Blue Team was deploying alongside to discuss the upcoming mission.
Then the Covenant had attacked.
One moment, John- was talking to the asari officer, the next the hangar door imploded. Blown out into space, he tried to contact his team, but the Covenant was jamming their communications. As he worked to reorient himself, slow down and assess the situation, John got several glimpses of the battle unfolding above him.
Above him - relative to the planet - was the Covenant assault carrier that had emerged from slipspace just seconds before. The carrier and the three cruisers escorting it were currently in a life-or-death struggle with the Coalition forces in orbit. Ships were exploding left and right as streams of dropships launched from the carrier and the cruisers towards the planet below.
The carrier's shields rippled as six asari frigates converted into unmanned fireships slammed into the shield with their engines pushed to flank acceleration, detonating their payloads. The shields collapsed entirely, plasma and shrapnel from the explosion washing over the exposed hull, but just as the UNSC Marathon-class cruiser Shield of Bone lined up a shot, pulse laser fire hit its bow, destroying sensors and armor and warping the MAC's barrel into uselessness.
A bit over a minute remained until he hit the ground. While John had slowed down considerably, his velocity was still too high. His options exhausted, he grit his teeth and prepared for the inevitable crash.
"Do not move, human!" a voice broke into his COM channel. The suit's computer determined the rough direction the signal was coming from; considering the jamming, the source had to be close. A second later, a contact entered his motion tracker range. Carefully, he turned to face the newcomer..
It was the asari from before. She was falling directly towards him, pointing her entire body straight down to reduce air resistance. As soon as she overtook him, she reached out and took hold of his shoulder, clambering onto his back and holding tight.
"Explain yourself," John-117 asked plainly, refraining from pulling her off his back only due to her being an ally and him needing to bleed off more speed.
"Human, I have a plan to survive this, but you need to remain perfectly still." She said, pointing past his head at a large lake. "I'll need my full concentration to slow us down while you guide us into the lake. Just before we impact, I'll let go, and you hit the water feet first." The asari sounded calm and serene, completely unfazed by what was happening.
He had considered heading for the water, but decided against it after calculating the odds. At the speed he was traveling at, a water landing would be indistinguishable from crashing into the hills, with a high chance of dying either way. However, if he hit the ground and broke his legs (or sustained other injuries that rendered him unable to continue), he could at least crawl to safety and wait for rescue. If that happened underwater, death would be practically assured, especially in the event of suit breach.
Still, if the asari had a better landing strategy, he had nothing to lose by following her advice. John nodded and leaned to the side, guiding himself towards the lake. The asari on his back wrapped her legs around his waist and then stretched out her arms, summoning a field of blue energy around them - the "biotics" John had been briefed on. To John's amazement, they started rapidly losing velocity, and the suit's computer instantly updated its estimates, giving him much better odds.
They hit the water.
The shock of the impact shook John to his ceramic bones, and for a moment it felt like they might snap. Then he and his passenger broke through the surface and sank to the bottom of the lake. Before he hit the bottom, however, the biotic field lit up again. John suddenly felt much lighter and, to his surprise, realized he was actually buoyant enough to swim now. He'd he'd never swum in MJOLNIR before, but he got the hang of it after a few experimental strokes. He swam towards the surface as the asari clung to his back.
Soon after they breached the surface, the water became shallow enough for them to walk. As John waded onto the sandy shore, the asari let go, got to her feet and, removing the helmet with a smooth motion, followed him. The two set out towards a nearby thicket of tall trees; once they reached it and confirmed the coast was clear, they began inspecting their gear.
Now John got his first good look at the asari officer. She looked old for their race, with eyes that seemed to radiate centuries of experience and conflict. He knew a veteran when he saw one, and this one was definitely a veteran. Having checked her helmet for busted seals and seepage, the asari adjusted the circlet on her forehead, shook her helmet one last time and put it back on. The helmet, made of dull blackened metal with blue hues, followed the contours of her head crest. It was matched with a heavy dull blue-and-gray camouflage hardsuit with tactical webbing attached to it, with a few subtle ornamental designs on the pauldrons that set her apart from the other asari commandos John had worked with over the last few months, and a red stripe painted across the middle of the chestplate, with smaller stripes highlighting the armored plating attached to the black undersuit. Unlike the thinner, form-fitting stealth suits worn by asari or salarian infiltrators, this was battle armor. She unfolded a submachine gun MJOLNIR's computer identified as M-9 Tempest and examined it for any water damage.
"This is a human world. I'll follow your lead, Master Chief Petty Officer." she said, nodding at him as she counted her grenades and examined her other weapon - the Disciple shotgun, John remembered from the briefings. He noted that this particular weapon was much more ornate than the weapons he'd seen in the hands of other asari or UNSC soldiers who had scavenged one from a battlefield.
John did the same. He reached for the rifle on his back, taking it and examining the weapon for any faults. It was a turian Phaeston rifle whose casing had been replaced with a facsimile of an MA5 series assault rifle, better suited to the ergonomics of the Spartans. The changes weren't just cosmetic: the gun was equipped with a larger ammo block and additional heat sinks, its internal mechanisms modified to fire heavier rounds. The gun would not be winning any beauty contests - it looked like an MA5B with another rifle growing inside it - but John had grown to appreciate its versatility and practically bottomless magazines. The latter made the gun especially popular with his Spartans, because it, like all other mass accelerator weapons, significantly increased their combat endurance.. It was most often supplemented by UNSC weapons, specifically those that used the kinds of explosive rounds or other specialist munitions that a mass accelerator rifle couldn't fabricate itself.
And, thanks to John's new omni-tool and fabricators now installed in his gauntlets, he could convert any suitable piece of scrap - or the reserves of "omni-gel" he carried with him - into new ammunition blocks or replacement parts. This in particular had been a game-changer for the UNSC ground forces, whose logistics officers breathed a sigh of relief now that the infantry no longer needed constant shipments of ammunition. John personally preferred the accuracy and fire rate of the MA5B but had to concede that the virtually non-existent logistical footprint made the Phaeston a superior weapon.
"The Covenant is going to break out of their mountain bases soon, now that their reinforcements have arrived in orbit. The nearest response forces will be moving to intercept the assault carrier as fast as they can, but it's going to take time for them to arrive, especially for the fleet units stationed in other systems. Until then, we're on our own," John explained, now inspecting his M6D magnum. There seemed to be some kind of blockage; the normally reliable sidearm refused to work properly. At the same time he once again tried to raise Blue Team or any other friendly forces, but only received static in response. "The Covenant have some kind of jamming system in place. I can't get a signal through. We are on our own unless we can disable those jammers or get out of range."
The asari put a hand on the side of her helmet. "That does not leave us with many options then. I am curious, however. Have the Covenant deployed these kinds of tactics before, human?" she asked as she unsheathed a sword and began sharpening it with her omni-tool.
John raised an eyebrow at the sight. Of course, the energy swords used by Elites were similarly somewhat anachronistic, but they were at least able to cut through Titanium-A as if it were butter. Perhaps it was a sidearm or an assassination weapon? This was not without precedent; combat knives issued to Spartans were as heavy as a sword to an unaugmented human, and he had made good use of them in the past. Maybe the metal had special properties? Or, perhaps, it was part of the uniform of whatever unit she belonged to - as he recalled from the briefings he'd received, the asari had no unified national military. For now, though, he wrote it off as a symbol of office or a ceremonial weapon.
"No, ma'am, not to this extent," John shook his head as he continued to try to clear the blockage, to no avail. He could now see that the slide was deformed, so he removed it, used the omni-tool built into his right gaunlet's fabricators to break it down and then rebuild it, and put it back in place. The whole process took eight seconds. "Ever since Operation: CRUSADER started, we've seen the Covenant employing new tactics and equipment that we have not seen them use before. ONI thinks it's because the Covenant used to see planetary invasions as some form of religious ritual, whereas now they're starting to treat it as an actual war. They are now establishing a more robust support network and building comprehensive defenses to protect it. Shielded fortresses, cloaked anti-orbital cannons, electronic warfare - they're learning quickly."
John thought back to New Milan and how the Covenant had almost killed Blue Team there. The exposed AA positions his team was sent to disable turned out to be a trap, and the Covenant commander deployed the troops he'd kept in reserve as soon as they were sure Spartans were there, with the orbital window closing when hidden anti-orbital guns opened fire. Air raids from previously-cloaked airfields had ravaged the UNSC air force and broken the orbital landings, while fresh Covenant troops moving from hidden bases had massacred the ODST and Marine forces who'd made planetfall. Then there were the incessant raids the Covenant Spec Ops Elites launched on field headquarters and command centers. After the anti-Scarab raid, Blue Team had been relegated to guarding the main UNSC command center on New Milan. They'd had to fight off four separate Covenant raids before the Covenant had been pushed off the planet. And now the Covenant was displaying new levels of EWAR that he didn't know they were capable of. It was to be expected that the Covenant wouldn't sit back and do nothing as they were driven away from the Inner Colonies.
A beam of purple plasma lanced into the sky, several kilometers away. John turned to track it, MJOLNIR's binoculars engaging automatically, and saw the beam blast through what had to be a UNSC ship in low orbit. At this distance, it was hard to pick out the ship against the night sky and determine its class, even with the binoculars at maximum zoom; going by the vaguely rifle-shaped silhouette, it had to be a frigate. The ship broke up as its reactors detonated, consuming the ship in a fireball. With a ship destroyed that close to the planet, the radioactive materials aboard would contaminate wherever the wreckage crashed. Even if the Coalition won, large parts of Alluvion would be rendered uninhabitable by the irradiated debris and fissiles from unused nuclear ordnance.
"I see the Covenant have brought anti-orbital weapons online," the asari commented. "Their presence on this planet must be stronger than we had predicted."
"I believe we're only starting to see just what Covenant defenses are like. For most of this war, we have never truly fought determined, well-entrenched Covenant defenders." John said, examining his frag grenades one by one. "The theories by military intelligence that they didn't take us seriously are starting to look correct. This war is only going to get worse from here."
"Are you worried, human?" the asari asked sincerely.
He chose his words carefully. "I'm not worried, but I am concerned about it. The Covenant are nothing if not persistent, and they are working to mitigate any advantage we have in every way they this war started, we had superior small unit tactics and commanders on the ground. We lost that advantage within two years due to the Covenant learning to target our command and control nodes first. The attrition only compounded this."
The asari officer nodded. Whatever she might have felt, she must have hidden it well. "And now they are using new naval tactics as well to mitigate the numerical advantage we have. I am worried for your species. The Citadel has most of the galaxy to fall back on, and if the Covenant advance through our systems as fast as they did through yours, it would take them centuries to defeat us. That would give us ample time to adapt their technology and turn it upon them. You have no such luxury."
"We'll fight the Covenant for centuries if we have to," she continued. "We did it against the rachni and the krogan. We'll do it again."
Another bright flash lit up in low orbit. John activated his binoculars again, zooming in only to see a glowing debris cloud, although the prow section was large enough and intact enough for him to recognize it as belonging to a Covenant battlecruiser. The enemy ship must have suffered a massive internal explosion; either it was a secondary explosion caused by battle damage, or someone snuck a nuke aboard. John assumed it to be the Blue Team's doing - they were in the Pelican with engines hot when he left, and they definitely had the skill.
The asari finished sharpening her sword and sheathed it at her side. She then started inspecting her pistol - an M-6 Carnifex, according to the warbook. Its finish was beautifully ornate, with the image of an asari wrapped around the barrel. "What will happen to this planet if the Coalition fleet loses?"
"The Covenant will enter orbit and glass the planet. Or they'll land forces to fight the defenders and secure whatever they're looking for, and then they will glass it. In either event, we'll die if we can't evacuate. And with the Covenant deploying jammers, that will be exceedingly difficult. We either make a break for UNSC lines and try to find transport off this planet..." John cocked his magnum to test the slide; it was as good as new. He could get used to this. "Or we cut through the Covenant lines, disable every anti-orbital cannon and communications jammer we can find, hijack a Covenant dropship and head for safety to regroup."
"How often have you done that?"
"On occasion, ma'am," John stated matter-of-factly.
"Call me Justicar Samara, human ranks do not have an equivalent for my position in asari society. I will defer to your leadership in these matters." she said, her Carnifex pistol coming back to life with a satisfying clack. "Lead the way. There are those who must face the justice of the goddess."
John nodded. "I'm on point. We'll start with the anti-orbital cannons."