Name: Aella (Greek) name of Amazonian warrior killed by Hercules
Spartan tag: A-273
Home world: borne on earth, before moving to Edranus II where she was taken from family.
Date of Birth: November 12, 2525
Date of death: MIA-assumed KIA after being tackled off cliff by Elite of unknown Rank
Gender: Female
Height: 6'10"
Hair Color: Black
Cybernetics: Spartan Neural Uplink
Skin: a light tan
Affiliation: UNSC
Rank: GySgt.
Specialty: Recon, Assassination, Stealth Ops.
Team roll: Recon
Battles: no major battles on record however as done several scouting operations, and assassination hits.
Status: MIA
Class: Spartan III Alpha Company
Armor: moljiner Mk 5 [B]
Helmet: Operator
Chest: collar breacher
Shoulder-R: ODST
Shoulder-L: Mk 5
Wrist: Tatictal U GPS
Utility: tactical soft case on right leg. Tactical trauma on left.
Knee: Grenadier
Knife: under left arm
Color: olive, stele.
Aella sat on a bench in the well lit metallic hallway of ONI Gauntlet Base awaiting her next set of orders, she was still dressed in her Armored ODST gear having not received SPI armor, but supposedly according to the dossier she was sent that problem would soon be solved. She ran a hand through her short black hair, and ran her hand over her right ear lobe where it was torn, when she was in boot camp she refused to remove her earrings, and they got caught on something and tore through her ear, of course she could get it fixed whenever she wanted but it was never important so she just let it be. She shifted slightly in order to get the armor more comfortable, but unable to do so she simply ignored the discomfort. The door across the hall from her slid opened and a young woman stepped out clad in the standard dress uniform.
"Ma'am the colonel is ready to see you, sorry for the weight, he got a rather disturbing call from colonel Holland and was detained."
"It's alright" she said, as she stood up, a hint of a Greek accent clung to her words. She walked through the doors, helmet under her arm, the woman following in toe. She entered the office, which was divided into two rooms, she was directed to go through the door at the end behind a desk by the woman, who proceeded to sit behind the desk and get to work on some documents that were left around.
She walked through the door, and saw an elderly man behind the desk. She stood at attention and saluted.
"At ease ma'am, and takes a seat." Said the colonel "I'm not sure you know, having just returned from a mission and all, but reach is under attack by the covenant." Said the admiral
"I had heard that."
"And they requested that aide be sent in all forms possible. Now you are currently one of Earths most valuable asset in the war against the covenant. So we decided that you be sent. However the call I just received from Holland revealed how dire the situation is on reach so we decided that we would step up the time table on something we were making for you. Now follow me." Said the colonel as he stood up and walked out of the room briskly.
The colonel led her through hallway after hallway until they reached an unmarked door with a pass word lock. The colonel pressed a few buttons and the door slid open. He led her into the room, which was unlit, but with her enhanced senses, there was lighting enough. At the other end of the room there was a raised platform that had a thick black curtain hanging hiding something from view.
"Good you're here, we just finished." Came a voice from behind the curtain. A second later a man in his early 30's walked out from behind the curtain. He wore a standard technician's uniform. "Ok. Now originally we were hoping to send you off in a suit of SPI armor, however, a better piece of equipment was made available, and we just couldn't send you off in SPI armor with that at hand."
"What is this piece of equipment you want to put me in?"
The technician pulled the curtain aside revealing a suit of Mjolnir armor, the armor was composed of an operator variant helmet, Ua/Base security chest plate, ODST left shoulder guard, and a Mk 5 right shoulder guard the left wrist had a heavy bracer, the right calf was a tactical trauma kit, and on the left was tactical soft case, that extended to the knee from the hip, and grenadier knee pads.. The armor was an olive color with steely grey details.
"What you're looking at is a suit of Mjolnir Mk V B variant armor, parts of the armor were switched out to best suit you."
"I thought the Mjolnir armor system was reserved for Spartan II's, why do I get one."
"Well currently you are one of the oldest Spartan III's and you have the most field experience, and we just decided you're worth giving it to, try not to prove us wrong." Said the technician, as he beckoned me over to the platform next to the armor. "Hold still" said the technician, Aella did so, and several other technicians began stripping her of her old armor, after that was done, one did something to her neural uplink. The technician that had been speaking with began to tell her about the armor she was wearing. "Ok well this armor system itself is quite special. Probably the most advanced the UNSC has at its disposal, but it costs a ton of money to make. The armor system, is quite complex. But we can tell you more once your suited up, and used to the armor, and on our way to reach." said the technician as he helped some others start putting the armor on. The process was complicated but the armor was finally on after a good 20 minutes. The technician slipped the helmet on over her head, and stepped back to a compute console, and started typing in commands. "Alright, stand back… powering up Armor. In 3, 2, 1."
The armors systems sprung to life, the heads up display showed all sorts of different windows for a second before it went blank, and a bar appeared in the upper left corner, a loading bar.
"Everything should be going perfectly now, so the armor is running a self diagnostic. When the diagnostic finishes, the armor will unlock, take care not to move quickly, the armor accelerates your movements start slowly until you get used to moving again." Said the technician.
The diagnostic finished shortly after and she attempted to step down off the platform. But the motion was indeed accelerated, the motion, sent her foot slamming into the steel floor, the sound of the impact was as loud as a gunshot, the motion caused her to start to fall backwards as her leg rebounded, she immediately attempted to correct herself, but wound up just dropping to her knees.
"Told you to take it easy." said the technician "try to make a few hand signs before you stand up at least just to get the idea on how to move you body." He added the last part quickly as she was about to attempt to stand.
"ok." She began to slowly make the basic hand signs that all Spartans used; slowly her movements became more accurate, controlled and quicker; soon enough she was able to move her hands like before she was in the new armor. She slowly got to her feat and. Started walking around. She was awkward as all hell, but eventually all her movements returned to normal.
"Alright good, you can move again… the colonel is waiting for you on the Savannah we'll be taking a warthog to the dry dock." Said the engineer "Oh I haven't introduced myself yet, my name call me Grayson." He grabbed a lab coat and headed out of the room, she followed closely behind
By worth hog it took them half an hour to reach the dry-dock. When they arrived they quickly transferred to a pelican and boarded the Savanna. As soon as they set down on the savanna, the Technician began running her through some simple diagnostics. And explaining how the armor worked. When she finished the diagnostic tests, the colonel walked in.
"Spartan, this mission is simple. When we get to reach, you'll drop to the surface in a HEV; from there you will investigate unusual covenant activity. It seems that the covenant is setting up a rather elaborate field base. If you find anything, anything at all you are to bring it to Sword base, from there Halsey will provide you with further orders."
"Is that everything?"
"Everything that ONI would tell us." The colonel stuck his handout to shake hers "It was an honor knowing you, good luck."
"Spartans never die, so you shouldn't sound like you sending me to die." She said as she shook his hand.
With that Aella left the room, and swung to the launching station for the drop pods, she was given a few cross glances from the ODST who were waiting there, but she paid them no mind as she grabbed a DMR and a sniper rifle, headed into her pod, and waited for the operator to fire her down to reach. When the operator shut the hatch on the pod and moved it into the firing position, she sat in the pod in the dim light of the computers. The pod shuttered for a half second before it was fired down words. As she fell, she allowed a brief second for part of her mind to wander to the dreamy hazy time of yesteryear when she was a child with her parents, before the attack on her home on Edranus II. The pods bone jarring deceleration brought her fully back to the present, the pod angled slightly before coming to a violent stop. She hurried grabbed her guns and kicked out the pod door.
She found the pod was wedged between two large trees both easily 8 ft. in diameter; she jumped the 3 ft. to the ground from where the pod crashed. She checked the Wrist mounted GPS for the waypoint she was to head to, the way point marked a cliff ledge, about a mile away from the base that would give her a good view of what the covenant were doing. According to the GPS she was a good 40 miles away, from the way point. And a good 300 miles away from sword base.
Better get walking she thought to her as she began to work her way east. She stuck largely to the dense wooded area, as she attempted to keep out of sight. She made it about a mile before she reached her first covenant patrol, two elite minors, a jackal sniper and several grunts. As much as she would have liked to kill the lot of them, if the patrol didn't make it back, the covenant would know something up, and that would only make her job harder. After considering her options, she decided that it would be best to let this patrol slip by, she pressed herself against the nearest tree that could provide adequate cover, and timed her movements so she stayed out of sight, as she went from behind one tree to the next, effortlessly and soon as she was sure the patrol was long gone, she began working her way east. She made it about another 10 miles before anything else interesting happened. When she stumbled upon this she immediately started to record it.
Before her 6 elite majors and dozens of jackals, skirmishers, and grunts all knelt before a hologram of a prophet, the religious leaders of the covenant, and while she couldn't understand what it was they were saying, she guessed by the sound of it, she would have to say it was a prayer of sorts, the prophet was leading the chant and the assembled mass responded on occasion.
This was too much for her to pass up; she would take out this group. Before she left the ship, she took a few small high powered explosive chargers, and put them in the tactical soft case, at the time she wasn't sure she would need them, or even use them. But now she was glad she took them. She worked quickly and quietly, and rigged the explosives to some of the largest trees around, and by piles of loose rock, she flipped the switch on the remote detonator, and a thunderous explosion shook the ground. She looked back and saw that several trees were blown into the clearing, along with a ton of rocks, effectively burying, and the assembled mass of covenant. She knew she basically just announced her arrival, to the covenant, but her HEV would have been found sooner or later, so it was merely a matter of time, now she had to move. She booked it to the cliff ledge that the way point marked, along the way she avoided a patrol that was hurrying along to the source of the large explosion. She checked her surroundings for a good hiding place, where she could watch the base, seeing nothing on the cliff ledge she looked down the cliff. She spotted a ledge large enough for her to lie, on, it also had a few bushes growing on it to hide her from anyone looking down and spotting her. She quickly climbed down the ledge, positioned herself under the bushes, and peered through the scope on her sniper rifle, at the base.
The Intel was right, this base was defiantly different than most covenant field bases, mostly because it looked like it was meant to be a permanent encampment, she saw what she assumed were hangers for their vehicles, and barracks, and a massive command building towards the center, there were also several engineers floating around the field base, constructing vehicles, or deconstructing other damaged equipment and repairing it. She captured the images through her helmets built in camera, she saw covenant practicing shooting and close combat. She watched, as she saw two elites pull out a pair of energy swords and begin dueling. She also tried to see if she could get any good images on how they replaced energy cores on their weapons, but unfortunately for her, whenever one of the weapons ran out of power, they brought it into one of the building and came out with a fresh one. She still got useful information from what she was seeing, in terms of covenant tactics. One thing that she saw that she found appalling, was how they treated the engineers. They were treated like slaves, and dirt, she wasn't sure if it was the same throughout the entire covenant or just this group, but she didn't think it would take much persuading to get an engineer to defect, if anyone ever could isolate one.
She watched the covenant movement for another 10 hours, before she saw anything new. A phantom drop ship flew down into the base, and dropped off no less than 20 elites, she almost mistook them for zealots, but upon closer inspection she saw, that while they wore red armor, the glowing orange, panels that protrude from there armor, separated them from any other know class of elite, she knew pictures and video recordings were useful, but a body would be a whole other story. If she was going to bring Halsey one of these elites she would only have one shot at it. She spent the next few hours memorizing the patrols in the base. She worked her way down the cliff face, quickly occasionally just jumping down to the next ledge. She climbed over the bases outer wall, when the patrol shifted; she immediately hid behind a group of plasma coils, she waited until she saw a group of elites leave the hanger after a phantom flew in. once the path was clear, she sprinted toward the hanger, she hid behind a bunch of broken ship parts, she caught her breath as she planed her next move.
The easiest way out of here would be to fly, but could I get a phantom out of here without being noticed? Better yet could I even fly a Phantom? She thought to herself, she noticed an Engineer float lazily into a phantom, through the gravity lift, that seemed to be out of commission, the phantom hovered a good 8 feet above the ground, she had an idea, it was a long shot but if it worked she would be out of here before anybody knew she was here. She sprinted from her hiding place, and jumped up grabbing the lip of the entrance to the ship, pulled herself in, and moved into the shadows, as quietly as she could. She saw that the engineer was accompanied by two grunts, which seemed to be, displeased with the engineer's entrance. She snuck over to both grunts and positioned herself just behind the two of them, she lashed out grabbed the grunts by their heads and smashed them together, she felt there skulls crack and break from the force of the impact. She than pushed the grunts bodies to the side, and cautiously approached the engineer. It quickly turned and faced her, she could tell it was startled as it began to whine and float to the corner.
"No, no, Sush its ok, I won't hurt you." She said calmly and quietly. "Look see," she reached behind her, and pulled her sniper rifle free, and placed it on the ground along with her DMR. "I need your help."
The engineer calmed down and floated towards her, she tensed up when one of its tentacles moved towards her helmets head cameras. The engineer removed the camera, disassembled it, prodded through its parts, put it back together and replaced it on her helmet, within 3 minutes. It faced her once again and cocked its head to the side as if to say "what do you need, and what do I get for it?"
"I need to get out of here after I get something, but I'm not entirely sure I can get out of here without flying one of these, which I'm not sure I can do. I'll take you with me, set you free."
The engineer withdrew for a second before pointing its worm like head at a device stuck to it; it pantomimed pulling and pointed at it again.
"Pull that off? Sure." She said as she slowly approached the engineer, she pulled the device off it carefully, and tossed it to the side, "so you'll help me?"
It nodded in response
"Good, give me a second I'll get what I need."
She jumped from the ship and left the engineer to its own devices, she peered around the frame of the entry way, outside she saw two of the strange elites from earlier. The two elites looked like they were ready for a fight at any given time, she waited for the elite's to look at the hanger, when their eyes passed over the door, stepped out of the frame, for a second before ducking back in, she was quick enough to let them catch but a glimpse of her. The two armored elites, approached the hanger, she jumped up the gravity lift of the phantom she was going to take out of here, the elites entered the hanger, and she watched them from the shadows of the phantoms interior, the elites ignited there energy swords, as they checked the hanger one drew close to the phantom she was hiding in.
"Pst hey up here." She whispered to the nearby elite.
Drawn to her voice, he approached the broken gravity lift. Aella hooked her legs over the lip and swung down legs, she wrapped one hand quickly around the elites throat crushing it, before pulling out her knife and ramming it through the helmet, the elite went limp, she hooked her arms under its and hoisted him up. She grabbed the elite's energy sword, and prepared to repeat the process once again. When she flipped down she met the elite face to face, planted the unignited blade into its chest, and chuckled as his face twisted with rage, he was about tablet out a rage filled howl, when she ignited the blade, it tore through his chest and it went limp. She pulled the other elite up with her and headed to the engineer, dripping the blade in the process.
"Hey get this thing out of here." She said as she hit a glowing panel on the wall of the phantom that sealed it. The engineer moved the ship out of the hanger.
So far things have been going quite well, almost too well, with my luck, we'll be found out.
Unfortunately for her, she was right; as the phantom ascended the banshees that were flying about took a formation and flow straight for the phantom. She hit the pannle on the wall and the mount for the turret slid out, she grabbed the turret and aimed it at the oncoming banshees, and opened fire. The plasma bolts struck the oncoming banshees and destroyed them one at a time.
"hey pinky, can you give me a hand with these, she said as an oncoming fuel rod blast forced her to tear the turret from its base and take cover behind the sealed walls of the phantom, the green plasma smashed against the hull of the phantom, causing it to glow red, she came out from cover, and opened fire. The engineer whined and pointed to a second control console, near where it was working. She hurried to the control console, and began to work the controls, a targeting monitor appeared, and she opened fire with the heavy concussive blasts from the phantoms main gun. The cannon made short work of the banshees but not before they did some serious damage to the engines and hull. The engineer did what it could to get the ship going but when it exited the ship, she knew she better get going, she grabbed one of the elites bodies, and jumped from the ship, she knew what to do to survive the impact at this speed, she over pressurized the hydro elastic gel, and smashed into a thick tree trunk the elites body smashed into her almost immediately after, the two bodies fell to the ground in an entangled mess. She felt like she broke every bone in her body. She checked her GPS, she was about 5 miles away from the Sword base, and she activated her com link
"This is Spartan 273 requesting immediate pick up, Sword base do you copy?"
"Rodger, pelican inbound."
Wonder where pinky went? She thought to herself as she pulled herself over to the trunk of a near buy tree, and almost on cue, she heard the whine of an engineer the engineer floated down and floated next to her. She noticed it was trying to pull the glove of her right hand. She removed it and stretched her hand. The engineer did something to the circuits in the glove, and passed it back, the shield monitor, recharged faster than normal.
"So where are you going?"
The engineer shrugged, and floated around the tree and looked closely at her visor. Before backing off.
"Here knock yourself out." She passed a clip from one of her rifles to the engineer.
The two of them waited for the pelican to arrive; when it did she tossed the corpses into the hold, and waited for the engineer to float on. When the pelican took off the engineer began rummaging through the hold. When the pelican arrived at sword base she slung the corpse over her shoulder and walked into the base. When she dropped the body onto Halsey's lab floor, it was easy to say there was mutual uncertainty, and even more when the engineer floated into the room, politely whining as it followed a technician that was moving in a new terminal.
"Well I was expecting photos and blurry video feeds and I get an unknown type of elite, and an engineer." Doctor Halsey said as she viewed the elite and looked at the video feed.
"So, what are my orders?"
"You're going to join the garrison at castle base."
'Yes ma'am