A/N
So, read the plot summary for Shadows of Reach; gave me the idea to drabble this up.
These Lonely Bones
Seven years, and he was back on Reach. Seven years, and he was back home.
Home. If he'd said the word out loud, it would have sounded foreign on his tongue. The world he'd been born on had been reduced to cinders, though after he stopped considering it his home. And the world on which he'd spent more years of his life than anywhere else, the world that had honed him into the man he was today, had ended up meeting a similar fate. He'd woken up to this world over forty years ago, running over dew-covered grass, under the gentle glow of Epsilon Eridani. He'd entered a world that was as far from gentle as was possible to get, before being flung out into a galaxy that was even worse. And now, finally, forty-two years after being brought to this world, and seven years after it was glassed, he was back here. He was back...home.
He gave the dirt a little nudge with his boot, just to make sure. It was thin, brittle, and blew away in the frigid air. Glancing back at Blue Team, he could only imagine what they'd be feeling, being back at this place. They'd been brought here together, and they'd been together when it had fallen to the Covenant. Now, they were here again, searching for a weapon that could help turn the tide against an even more unstoppable enemy. They were retrieving the weapons from their drop pods before activating their disposal mechanisms, where an acid would be released and dissolve the pods into a metallic goop. So far, the Created hadn't detected them, nor the Prowler that had slipped into the planet's orbit. And even if Azod was pretty clear of Promethean forces, no harm in being precautious.
"So," Fred said, walking forward and weaving his combat knife through his fingers. "Reach." He looked at John. "Nice."
"Nice?" Linda asked.
"Nice in a lonely, desolate, glassed sort of way." He kept weaving the knife between his fingers. "How's it feel to be home?"
John didn't answer. No-one did. Even when Kelly spoke next, John could tell she was avoiding the subject.
"Careful with that Fred, you'll cut yourself."
He handed her the hilt of the knife. "You want to try?"
"No, I actually want to see that work against a Promethean. Not counting on that though."
Fred raised two fingers to his visor before sheathing the blade. "Could happen one day."
John doubted it. He'd spent one year of his life making the Infinity home, and in that year, had seen things that 27 years of fighting the Covenant had failed to. Prometheans shrugging off bombs, bullets, and everything in-between. Ships rendered inert with a single pulse, soldiers cloven in two by shining blades, entire worlds depopulated when they'd refused to submit. The Created had accomplished in less than a year what the Covenant had failed to do in nearly three decades, and now, whatever the ruins of CASTLE Base could offer them, he was dubious as to what difference it would make. Many said that the Created had already won, and despite numerous firefights across numerous warzones, John hadn't seen anything that he felt could refute that assertion.
He looked back at his team. "Prepare to move out."
Fred nodded. Linda remained silent. Kelly however, was looking at her wrist-pad.
"Kelly?"
She looked up at him. "I'm picking something up. Looks like UNSC IFF."
"IFF? Out here? Impossible," Fred said. "No-one's been on this planet for seven years."
"Maybe survivours?" Linda asked.
"Again, seven years. And even if we account for survey teams..." He trailed off, looking at John. "Trap, right?"
John remained silent.
"Chief?" Kelly asked.
John remained silent, as did Linda. Though it was a silence he eventually broke.
"The Created don't need to set a trap for us," he murmured. "They don't need to set a trap for anyone."
"Yeah, but it's us," Fred said. "And you..."
He at least had the grace to not continue that sentence, John reflected. He looked at his own wrist pad, showing the 152 killometre journey between here and CASTLE Base. Sure enough, his pad was picking up the UNSC IFF, thought it was eight klicks away. Not too drastic a detour, but a detour nonetheless.
"Chief, if someone's here..." said slowly.
"If someone's here, then it makes our job more difficult," Linda pointed out.
"But we-"
"Fred, Linda, proceed to RV Alpha Point, wait for us," John said. "Kelly, with me. Maintain radio silence for the duration. Don't hear from Kelly and me in an hour, proceed to Bravo Point."
He didn't need to list all the points between Bravo and CASTLE. But looking at Blue Team, at the way each Spartan carried themselves in light of these new orders, he did wonder if he needed to repeat them.
"Move out."
And if he was giving the correct orders at all. Because while he doubted it was a trap, Linda was right - a survivour would make their job a lot harder. It was a long way to CASTLE Base, and this plan relied on them getting there by foot.
"Right..." Fred looked at Linda, then John, then Kelly, then back to Linda. "Of course. See you at the RV."
Hearing the tone in Fred's voice, John wished that he could have mustered a bit more confidence. But then, that would be asking confidence of Fred that he didn't feel himself. And even as Kelly walked over, as she gave him a small nod, it was confidence that he didn't feel returning.
He gave her a look. "Lead the way."
Once, in boots that were designed just for him, John had run across the grass of Reach. Now, in boots of a different kind that were also designed for him, he was running across dirt.
Kelly as always took the lead, but was going slow enough that John didn't have any trouble keeping up with her. To the outside observer, it might have appeared if the two Spartans were bounding across the landscape, and with the jets of their MJOLNIR armour providing extra thrust, that remained true, to an extent. But even at the age of 48, John remained in better physical condition than most people were in their twenties. Training, cryo, and genetic enhancements had seen to that.
"Chief?"
Though, he thought, as he looked across the wastelands of Reach, what had that amounted to? A victory against the enemy that had besieged this place, well after the planet was destroyed? A victory, followed by complete and utter defeat?
"John?"
Defeat at the hands of a human AI that had helped him achieve that first victory. Something that a poet might have called irony. And something that he called a knife in his gut, twisting ever deeper.
"John!"
He snapped to attention, nearly losing his stride. Kelly was still running, and her face was still forward, but the radio was doing its work.
"I ordered radio silence," he murmured.
This time, she did glance at him. "No-one's going to pick us up at this range."
"As I said, radio silence."
Kelly kept looking at him for a second, even slowing her pace, before continuing on to the source of the IFF. Which as far as John was concerned, was just as well. He knew what she was going to say. It was something that she asked him every month, asking the question that Fred and Linda also wanted to ask, but unlike Kelly, managed to respect propriety - "are you alright?" "How are you holding up?" "Anything you want to talk about?" Part of him, a small part, one that had lingered from the boy he'd been when he'd first been brought to this world, appreciated it. The other, larger, older part, wanted nothing to do with it. He was a soldier. He had a job to do. It didn't matter how he was, or how he was feeling, or what he thought about Cortana's betrayal, none of it. Feelings weren't going to defeat the Created. Firepower was. Maybe. Possibly. Potentially.
Kelly skidded to a halt and John, following her lead, did so as well.
"Shit," Kelly whispered.
Not a word that was needed, but...John unholstered his rifle. Scratch that, "shit" was the perfect word for the sight before them. He glanced at Kelly, who'd unholstered her shotgun, glancing at John before returning her sight to the charnel house before them.
"The Created?" she asked.
John shook his head.
"No. Of course not."
John didn't dispute the point, as he looked at them. Bodies. Dozens of them - Grunts, Jackals, and even Elites, spread out across the dirt in the shadow of a comms tower. All of them were nothing more than skeletons, their armour rusting after years of exposure to the elements. As Kelly said, it couldn't have been the Created who were responsible - the bodies were too decomposed for that. Which only left...
"Reach," Kelly whispered. "They've been here since the planet fell."
John remained silent.
"Which means that our UNSC IFF is..."
John looked at her. "Move. Five metre spread, eyes sharp."
Kelly pumped her shotgun and moved forward. John, raising his rifle, followed her lead.
Seven years. Seven years since the planet fell, seven years since what people had called humanity's worst defeat in the Human-Covenant War. Having been at the planet itself, John wasn't sure if "worst defeat" was fair, given the horrific cost Reach's defenders had inflicted upon the alien juggernaut, but then again, Reach's loss couldn't be understated. And seeing the scars of that battle, as macabre as it was...he gave the body of an Elite a nudge with his boot. There was a word for this, he reflected. Catharsis. Here and now, sangheili under Thel 'Vadam fought the Created with all the ferocity he'd come to expect from their species, but these sangheili, these Elites, these murderers...he knelt down by the Elite's body. He wouldn't shed any tears for them. Nor Thel, if it came to it. Thel 'Vadam, then Thel 'Vadamee, otherwise known as the Arbiter, may have fought at his side on the Ark, but he'd been the one who'd condemned this planet to death. He'd been the one who'd sent his people to kill John's people, and that was a steep butcher's bill to pay.
Kelly stopped walking and looked at him. "Chief?"
He was barely listening as he examined the Elite's corpse. Specifically, the holes in its armour that had penetrated its flesh and even bone. He looked at Kelly. "Ballistics," he said. "Definitely not Created."
He got to his feet and Kelly glanced at a nearby Grunt corpse, before looking back at him. "Takes you back, doesn't it?"
John didn't answer. It did, but he wasn't in the mood to reminisce. Not when Kelly was so regularly pushing him to open up, as if he could afford to do that. He clutched his rifle. "Let's find that IFF."
Kelly checked her wrist pad. "About fifty mikes from here."
She continued leading them through the charnel house. The close they got, the more bodies they found. And as nice as it was to see Covenant bodies, John was frowning - a battle had occurred here between Covenant and UNSC forces. So then where were the UNSC bodies? Definitely not buried. And unless there'd been Brutes here as well, almost certainly not eaten as well. Granted, the Jackals might have had their fill, but then there should be armour, no? The Covenant hadn't taken trophies from humans - maybe the odd skull by the occasional Brute chieftain, maybe the odd piece of contraband by a Jackal or Grunt, but those were the exceptions rather than the rule. And speaking of exceptions...
Both Spartans came to a halt. They'd found the IFF source, and a whole bunch of bodies beside.
"Well," Kelly whispered. "This is it."
Was, it, John reflected. He walked over to the IFF source. "Put up a fight at least."
Kelly didn't say anything, and John couldn't blame her. It wasn't often that one came across the body of a Spartan. And it was even less often that one found a body reduced to a skeleton.
Kelly glanced around. "Did this guy...did he kill all of them? By himself?"
"You tell me," John murmured. He squatted down, shouldered his rifle, and gave the corpse a look.
The Spartan's armour was brown. The body looked male, but he couldn't be sure. The body and its armour showed multiple signs of plasma fire and only slightly less impalement wounds. Groups of punctures, evenly spaced, the armour singed - telltale signs of energy swords. John glanced around at the bodies of the Elites, wondering how many of them had ganged up on the poor bastard before meeting their own end. And why none of those bodies had been recovered. Lack of time? Or a warped sign of respect?
Kelly knelt beside him and pulled up the Spartan's dog tags. "Spartan B-three-one-two," she read out.
"And his name?"
"Hasn't got one. Least not here." She dropped the tags and got to her feet. "B-three-one-two. That's not a standard Spartan Two designation."
"Because he isn't a Spartan Two. He's a Spartan Three." John looked up at her. "But you knew that already."
Kelly, after a pause, murmured, "I didn't know until Onyx."
"Course you didn't. No-one did." John looked back at the Spartan Three, recalling when he'd first learnt of the program...and being distinctly unsurprised. He'd been thawed out of cryo and into a world where a Spartan-IV Program existed. Even without accessing what his rank allowed on the program's predecessor, of learning how James Ackerson had recruited hundreds of children to function as glorified suicide squads, it didn't surprise him. The Spartan-II Program had violated every code of ethics there was in the name of preserving peace across human-controlled space. The Spartan-III Program had done likewise. Whatever his history with Ackerson, he couldn't fault the man's actions here, be they at Onyx or Mars. Reach though...
He ripped the Spartan's dog tags off his neck, clutching them. "Least we can confirm he's KIA now."
"Don't Spartans never die?" Kelly asked.
He looked at her. "We both know that's not true. Everyone knows that's not true."
Kelly didn't say anything. Blue Team, as far as they knew, were the only four Spartan-IIs left. And over the last year, attrition had taken its toll on the Spartan Fours. Spartans could die. And as the Created and Covenant had both demonstrated, die in very unpleasant ways.
"Wonder where his helmet is," Kelly asked, looking around. "If we-"
"We meet with Linda and Fred at Alpha Point. That's it." John pocketed the Spartan's tags. "And that's the last of the matter."
"But we-"
"That's an order."
Kelly, much to his relief, didn't object, nor use the opportunity to play nurse maid. Once, when, or rather, if this ended, he could indulge in a shrink show, but now, he had a mission. Reach had fallen, and as long as the Created existed, it would never be free again.
"Moving out Chief." Kelly turned around and began to head off, not seeing John give one last glance at the body.
Maybe, in time, the body would be buried. Or maybe it would remain, feeding the soil, as life returned to Reach. Perhaps one day, a child born in a world without war would find his helmet, and marvel at those who'd given their lives so a new generation could live free. Maybe one day, Reach would be a world of life and laughter again. But until then...
Until then, there was a mission to complete.
For him, there was always another mission.