"Don't look conspicuous; it draws fire."
-excerpt from Murphy's Laws of Combat Operations
Location: UNSC Murphy's law in geosynchronous orbit above planet Reach, 12:30 standard military time, January 3rd, 2558
Brandon had been staring out the window of the pelican since it had sped away from the cemetery's docking bay and still could not figure out where it was headed.
As far as he could tell there were no ships in line with the current trajectory the pelican was heading. He was about to ask the pilot if she knew where she was going when a Prowler class vessel decloaked not 200 meters of the bow of the pelican.
The drop ship's pilot expertly maneuvered the pelican underneath the ship and up into its hangar bay. Brandon walked next to Alison as they exited the drop ship, followed by its pilot, Lian Devereaux.
They strolled across the hanger taking in the sheer amount of weapons and vehicles, both UNSC and Covenant, sitting around, some half disassembled and others that were intact and looked nothing like their former selves. They all appeared to be upgraded in at least one way, some didn't even look like they were fireable anymore.
This place looks like my garage, Brandon thought.
What was even more curious was that the only crew he could see around were two raggedy ass looking marines with an Admiral Osman standing between them.
Kind of a motley crew for an ONI ship, he though.
As he approached the crew he wasn't really expecting what to think of them.
"Good evening Lieutenant Brandon and thank you for joining us. Welcome aboard the UNSC Murphy's law, the crew here is pretty skeleton but every member is the absolute best in their field. Mal and Vaz are both top notch marines and Dev is the best pilot in the ODSTs. But trust me, you'll get to know them latter," she said with a smile. "As for the ship we carry a full compliment of weapons and stealth systems as well as a huragok, which is the cause for the mountains of disassembled weapons."
Brandon had heard of huragok, or engineers as they were called by the enlisted men. They were interesting little creatures, and he was looking forward to seeing them in action.
"Adj, you can come out now," she called to a door on the other side of the hangar, and at lightning speed a blue and pink mass of tentacles floated towards them.
"greetings, I am huragok designate requires adjustment. Do you require assistance reclaimer?" The huragok said thought its translation device.
"No thank you, I'm fine," Brandon said to the curious creature, which waisted no time and sped off without a word to a pile of weapons and began to disassemble them with lightning speed.
"Now that you are acquainted with the crew I will turn you over to our ships AI for your mission briefing."
As she said this an AI hologram that appeared to be a plain blue box popped up behind her. "Good evening gentleman and ladies! I am Black Box, your shipboard AI, but please, call me BB. I know all and see all so try to behave yourselves. I will be walking you through the truly splendid mission we have for us today," BB said with as much sarcasm as an AI could possibly contain.
It then proceeded to project something onto itself that looked like a planet shooting out a large laser.
"This dear boys and girls is Draetheus v's moon X50. You may recognize the name from the war games tactical simulator as the planet where Commander Sarah Palmer made a name for herself. X50 is a forerunner machine built to build and destroy planets. That large laser is literally, the second most destructive weapon know to man after Halo. ONI REAP-X wants us to go to this moon and attempt to reverse engineer the technology located there, and hopefully get some useful kit out of it. However, since the battle of Draetheus V the moon is currently abandoned and in covenant occupied space, it won't be easy getting their but our prowler technology should assist with that. When we arrive we will assist REAP-X teams by providing security and lieutenant Brandon will serve as our resident expert on military technology. Any questions?"
"Yeah," Mal said "why is there a complete lack of details in this report about everything from Covenant strength to how safe this thing exactly is?"
"Truth be told we don't know," Osman said, honesty in her expression, "but what does it matter anyway? We don't plan, we improvise."
That was not what Brandon had wanted to hear.
"Does anyone have anything to add?"
No one said a word.
"Well, now that we have that cleared up, BB, get us underway," she commanded.
"Yes sir," he responded, and the ship jumped almost immediately after.
"Brandon, Alison, follow me to your new quarters." Brandon began to think this mission may not be quite as bad as he had expected as he followed the admiral into the depths of the ship.
Location: UNSC Murphy's law, en route to forerunner installation X50, 20:00 hours standard military time, January 3rd, 2559
Alison sat awkwardly down on the bed of her new quarters. It was a very strange experience for her to have a cabin this nice all to herself. Come to think of it, she couldn't think of the last time she had slept out of armor in the past five months.
ONI only provided the best, and this cabin was no exception. It had a large comfortable couch in addition to a desk with a plush leather chair and computer terminal. A painting of an old earth navy ship was hung above the comfy looking bed which sat across from a spacious closet which contained nothing but her vacuum suit and a change of BDU's.
She couldn't help but question the necessity of it all and why she was lounging in a plush cabin while other Spartans and marines were slugging it out in the mud, but decided to enjoy it while it lasted.
She laid down and tried to catch some rest but something inside of her made her completely unable to enjoy this rare opportunity she had been given. As absolutely exhausted as she was she could not bring herself to close her eyes and simply sleep. She began to fidget and toss and turn. Finally she decided it was no use, she wasn't falling asleep anytime soon.
She sat up and began to pace the room restlessly. Having nothing to do and no way to sleep always messed with her. She remembered the Lieutenant wanting to know more about her back on the station. She wasn't quite sure what she thought of him yet, but wanting to know a little about someone who was supposed to watch your back was understandable, and talking to him was better than sitting here and slowly driving herself crazy.
She pressed the intercom button on the door of the Lieutenant's room.
"Lieutenant? May I come in?" She asked.
He looked understandably surprised to see her. What could she possibly want now?
"Sure," he responded.
She entered and glanced around the room.
Even at first glance she noticed he wasn't like most Army personnel she had seen. From what little contact with regular UNSC forces she had had she had come to know that the army was incredibly picky about how there armor and uniforms were set up, but simply glancing at the lieutenant she quickly figured out he had no such qualms. He wore a pt hoodie that looked absolutely threadbare and a pair of BDU pants that were still for some reason made in that incredibly useless 21st century UCP camouflage. His armor sat next to him in kind of a pile. It was an old set of airborne infantry armor, with several non standard mag pouches and pieces of armor plate haphazardly welded and Velcroed to it charred, matte brown surface. His hair was buzz cut to the point that he was nearly bald and his five o'clock shadow hid a small wound from What looked like a bullet ricochet. Other than that he didn't look particularly battle weary. His skin wasn't dry and cracked like most soldiers and his hands were only about as calloused as anyone else in the UNSC, but when he looked at her he could see it in his eyes. This man had seen a lot of combat.
"Hello Lieutenant, I couldn't sleep so I decided to come over here. Maybe we could talk," she said, in much the same way she even tone she had spoken in earlier.
"What did you want to know?" He inquired.
He really didn't want to tell her anything. He knew about Spartans, and all the glory they took compared to the supreme lack of help that they really were.
She walked over to the couch to the side of his bed and sat down.
"Well, tell me about the unit you were attached to before now, I was told by admiral Osman that your unit was quite famous among the Army."
The question infuriated him. The Spartans were already party to there own set of heroic fair tales. Why did she care about how the other half really lived? He attempted to dodge the question.
"And why would you possibly care what happened to them?" he said after a moment, "stories like theirs typically aren't the best morale boosts."
"I don't know," she responded, seeming oblivious to the Lieutenant's annoyance, "besides, hearing a story about a unit of war heroes can't be all that bad."
Brandon sat and thought for a long moment. Ever since he had entered the cemetery that day images of his fallen comrades had invaded his mind, taking over his thoughts and drugging up memories he was sure he had made himself forget. Her mention of it only made it worse. He had wanted to tell someone about it for a long time, but a Spartan? What kind of help would that be anyway?
He looked over at her. She seemed unnaturally eager to hear the story.
What the hell, maybe it would be good for her to know how the war really went, he thought.
"They're only heroes because they're martyrs," he said coldly, "They're dead, killed in an ambush during operation: UPPERCUT on Reach back in 2552. We had to defend a saber facility so some group of Spartans could get into orbit to do God knows what, or at least we died trying," He said sternly. He could still see the faces and names of all the dead and dying troopers. No wonder he got upset when the Army's role in the war was downplayed.
"Uh...wow," Alison said aloud in shock.
"Yeah I expected as much," Brandon shot back, still trying to get his fallen comrades faces out of his head. He swore he was almost still there, the faces of his men burned into the back of his mind still seemed like they had died only yesterday. He fought the anger that came over him when he though about them, anger at the Covenant, anger at the circumstances, anger at himself for what he saw as his own lapse of duty, anger at Alison for getting all the glory for a fight his men had fought and died in.
"I'm sorry Lieutenant," she said dryly.
"And why would you be?" He asked in a venomous tone, "I've had people swear up and down to me that every active Spartan was on Reach when it fell, and I didn't see one of them. Hell, I heard noble team was less than a click away from me at one point. My unit was being overrun, I called broken arrow, and I didn't see any Spartans show up to help. So why do I see a monument to you on every corner while my men get to be forgotten?"
Hot tears began to roll down Brandon's face as his memories of operation UPPERCUT came back to him in full force. It was only about ten minutes into the battle and he was already dragging his best friend from an overturned warthog by his drag Handle, a plasma burn on his thigh, a two foot long piece of shrapnel sticking through him and his vest. By the time Brandon had pulled Sergeant Michael from the vehicle his screams had stopped and he had already died. Brandon tore off Michael's vest to try to revive him with bio foam and CPR but it was no use, his best friend was dead, he hadn't died in a blaze of glory like people seem to think all soldiers go out in, he had gone out with a whimper.
Brandon wiped the two single tears from his face and stared straight ahead.
Alison looked at him with a saddened expression, which vanished a moment latter before he could notice it. She felt a twang of guilt about the whole thing. She wanted to do something for him, but she didn't know what. He hated her, and she still didn't understand why. She hadn't been on Reach, she couldn't have helped him even if she had known.
"I'm sorry Lieutenant, I shouldn't have come here in the first place."
He shot her a glare that clearly read get out, but once she had left he felt almost worse than when she had asked him the question. This time he didn't feel angry, he felt guilty. He had just chewed out Alison for what? Trying to talk to him, which was probably quite a difficult thing for a Spartan to do.
Boy you sure screwed that one up, he though.
He contemplated running after her and apologizing but he doubted she would appreciate hearing anything out of him right now.
It was going to be a long mission, and he was going to find a way to make it up to her.
Neither he nor Alison slept well that night. Each simply stared at the ceiling and thought restlessly about a war they had yet to come to terms with.