Disclaimer: HaloTM is property of Bungie Studios. Any relations to characters or events in the game itself or the Halo novels are purely coincidental. : )
Chapter 1 - The Revival
It was dark. No light could be seen as he floated through the air. The silence was eerie, and the fact that he could not move was downright unsettling. He had been through this before, another wonderful unpleasantry of cryo sleep, the dream most experienced before they gained full consciousness. As had happened all the times before, the darkness gave way to light and mist filled his senses. He slowly felt his body making contact with the ground. The growing light became brighter and brighter. Then as it became too intense, he opened his eyes.
"He's awake, begin the process on all the others."
Spartan277, the leader of the second generation of SpartanII soldiers, looked around the room he was in. It was not the same cryo facility he had gone under at, and it made him nervous. He noticed two navy techs walking down the row of pods to his right. As he watched them, a third came from that direction and stopped by him as he climbed out of the pod. The tech nodded a sloppy and hasty salute. "Something just doesn't feel right here....," the Spartan thought to himself.
"Welcome to Antarctic Cryogenic Facility 398. Have a good sleep, Chief?" the tech said. His voice seemed depressed, and his humor very dry. The Spartan gave him a quick nod, but winced at his codename. Nobody wanted to be named after a dead hero, especially when he was a Spartan himself. The news of the Pillar of Autumn's apparent destruction had hit home an hour before he went under.
"How long have I been out for, why are we all being woken up, and what's the good word, if any?" the Chief asked hesitantly, trying to sound both serious but positive with the last comment, but knowing the response was not going to be good. His words seem to affect the tech like a punch to the stomach. His face seemed to darken as he looked back at the Spartan.
"I hate to say it, but there is no good word here. All hell's broken loose," the navy tech mumbled. The Spartan looked at the man with a serious face.
"What exactly do you mean? Don't tell me it's the Covenant." The tech just shook his head, then slowly nodded. Even the Chief felt a pang of fear as he realized the implications of this situation. He knew this was the news nobody wanted to hear. "How long ago? What happened? Tell me now!" Before the man could reply, a senior officer walked into the cryo bay. The Spartan wasted no time in snapping a crisp salute.
"Hello Chief, no need for the formalities. As soon as you and your friends over there get suited up, you are to report to the briefing room immediately. I believe you already understand the implications of this situation, and what is at stake. You are to come in full combat gear, and be ready to move out soon."
To accustomed to forget it, he snapped another salute, answering with a stout "Yes sir!" He turned and walked across the room. The Spartans body armor was lined in a row against the far wall he found his personalized suit and stepped in, along with the help of the tech whom had broken the news to him. As soon as he put his helmet on and snapped down the visor, he felt the suit come to life.
His armor was a step up from his predecessor's model, the MJOLNIR II. The energy shield produced by it was twice as powerful as the original and recharged up to five times faster. For tactical purposes, the energy of the shield could be controlled and concentrated in one spot on the armor at the thoughts of the user. The plating of the armor was also more advanced and much lighter, and could deflect nearly anything. The suit also multiplied the user's strength to a nearly mythical level.
He felt the liquid power flowing through his body as the muscular amplifiers in his suit activated. He watched in the visor/HUD as the suit ran thousands of system checks per second. A small motion sensor activated in the corner of his visor. He saw his own heart and vital rhythms displayed in an upper corner of the suit, and the shield monitor also popped up in the center of the visor's upper corner. He noticed the lack of his ammo counter linkup. Putting that aside, he waited till the green OK light flashed twice before he walked over to the cryo tubes that were just opening up.
The first tube opened up, releasing a wave of cryo mist into the room. Not missing a second, Spartan279 hopped out of the cryo tube. She was a fair sized woman, rather on the short side for a Spartan, with military-short brown hair and blue eyes. She always wore a serious face, but there was the soul of a mischievous rebel underneath it. Thus, she had been designated the explosives expert. Seeing her without a Jackhammer launcher on her shoulder or a readied grenade in her hand was a rare sight.
"Welcome back Wolf," the Chief said, managing to force a smile. She looked up at the team leader and was about to reply when she saw it. It was obvious that his smile was forced. His face looked grim and she knew something had come up. Chief saw her face tense up. "Get suited up, on the double." She nodded and jogged towards the armor racks. The Chief quickly moved to the next cryo tube.
The second tube opened like the first, spewing its misty contents into the room. Spartan280 looked out of her cryo tube. Upon seeing the Chief, she leisurely pushed herself out of the tube and quietly stepped down to the floor. She was a fairly tall woman, with light brown hair and rare purple eyes, a product of her visual augmentation. She always wore a deceptive smirk, which fit her personality. She considered herself the team's stealth expert, and was deadly with nothing but a pistol and her body. Droves of enemy sentries had been decimated without even knowing what hit them.
The Spartan glanced at the Chief matter-of-factly. "I'll be busy suiting up, so call me if you need me." She began walking towards the racks. Her leader just looked at her and shook his head. "Whatever you say Fox. Whatever you say."
As the Chief continued his walk down the row, the third pod opened. After taking an initial look around the room, Spartan283 hopped down to the floor. Even without his body armor, his brown eyes stood even with the bottom edge of the Chief's visor. He ran a hand through his brown, military shorn hair while checking out the room a bit more. As the team's only sniper, he had a sharp eye and a personality to match. Given an S2AM rifle and some high ground, he was an unstoppable force, and a true asset in the heat of a battle. He glanced over at the armor racks, then looked back at the Chief. "Guess I should get suited up?"
"Yes Church, on the double." Quick to catch the subtle look in the Chief's eyes, he rushed to join the other two Spartans. Even with the matters at hand, the Chief still couldn't manage not wondering about the origins of his strange codename.
He had little time to wonder as the last pod began to open. Remembering what it contained, the Chief managed to force a smile. Before the door of the cryo tube could fully open, Spartan285 jumped out onto the cryo bay floor. She had brown hair and matching eyes set on top of a wiry frame. Other than her complete fearlessness and her ferocious battle field personality, which led to her appropriate codename, she held no specialty position on the team. Still, the team could always count on her to lead a charge or do dangerous tasks, which she seemed to almost live for. Noticing the others suiting up, her face became even brighter. "Guess it's time to earn our pay, huh?"
Smirking back to her, the Chief made a hasty nod. "Nice to see you're in a good mood, Rage." She smiled back at his usual humor and grabbed her armor from the rack.
Within two minutes, the Spartans were fully suited up and ready to go. Another navy tech led the team out of the room, down a short hallway, and into the weapons locker. The Chief walked over and grabbed an MA5B assault rifle and five pre-loaded clips, along with 1000 rounds of spare ammunition, a covenant plasma rifle, and a half dozen frag grenades. He liked to have a lot of firepower, but not too much to weigh him down. Also in his weaponry, he had a special device that could triple the power of his armors shielding, but only for a few moments.
Wolf entered a specially sealed explosive room to pick up her weapon of choice, her specially modified Jackhammer man portable missile launcher, formally know as the M19. She could drain energy from her shield to turn the jackhammer's usually slow moving rockets into veritable cruise missiles. She also slung three canisters or rockets over her shoulders, and loaded almost all of her ammo pouches with an assortment of frag and plasma grenades. Due to the weight of the typical load of a demolitions expert, her suit, when produced, had been equipped with extra muscular amplifiers.
Fox walked over to a special case to pick up her specialty pistol, which had a modified barrel for greater accuracy and a built-in silencer for sound suppression, and 200 specially made rounds for higher penetration abilities. She also picked up her special camo generator, allowing her to become nearly invisible for a period of thirty seconds. Not liking the disturbance created by grenades, she only took two.
Church quickly located his weapon, an S2AM sniper rifle with an enhanced scope. The extra zoom abilities allowed him to provide his team with the type of cover fire most marines could only dream of. He proceeded to load his ammo pouches with 100 of the large, armor piercing rounds.
Deciding to try something new, Rage walked over to the experimental weapons rack and appropriated both a modified version of the MA5B which included a larger clip, barrel, and had a scope, as well as a pair of small but powerful S3R sub-machine guns. Both weapons were considered experimental because of the huge amount of recoil they produced, enough to tear the arm off a normal marine. Rage merely saw this as a acceptable risk and an interesting challenge. By the time she was done, her ammo pouches rattled, loaded to the bursting point with thousands of rounds of automatic weapons ammo.
Loaded with nearly enough firepower to destroy a good portion of a Covenant armada, and the cryo facility they were in for that matter, the team of five Spartans headed down another hallway, much longer this time, to a reinforced hatch guarded by two well armed marines. The words "Briefing Room" were stenciled above the doorway. The marine on the left keyed up the pad next to him, causing the hatch to slide apart with a slight mechanical whistle. The team took a final look around the hallway, then stepped through the door.