About a year later we were each given our Mjolnir battle armor and put in live training exercises,even after a year the pain of losing two of my friends hadn't gone away and I still hated the UNSC for what they had done to all of us, most of the others actually enjoyed what had happened, to hell with them.
Anyhow, life went on I was never really in any real combat against the covenant until about three months before the fall of Reach. A UNSC flagship named the Santa Maria had come up missing, all radio contact had been cut off completely, there hadn't even been an SOS signal, to Oni it was an odd occurrence, Flagships don't just disappear, it showed up on scanners about a week later, it was drifting. Me, and Anthony were assigned a small group of marines and were given a pelican drop ship, our mission was to investigate the remains of the ship and get a captains log back to Oni, simple.
Anthony and I sat in the back with the Marines, they all fixed their gaze on us, probably wandering what we were looking at behind the visors, one of them spoke up. "So you guys are Spartans?"
We nodded
"They say you guys can stop entire armada's of Covenant troops, can you?"
"When we want too" Anthony replied
The marines went silent as we approached the ship.
"Pilot, take the marines to the hangar and secure a perimeter, Anthony and I will secure the engine room Via the main Thruster vents." I said
The marines looked at us again, "How do you plan on doing that? This pelican wont fit in that tiny space?"
"We will insert ourselves, make a pass around the engines and we'll take it from there."
The foot soldiers all watched as we closed the small airlock in the pelican and opened the bombay door. Anthony and I stared at the ship.
"You ready for this Ant?"
He shrugged "Yeah"
"Don't miss"
"Don't worry"
With that we pushed off, both knowing that if we missed that we would float in space until we died, I don't think that we cared. We landed against the ship beside the main thruster, while we held on, we used our free hands to pull the vent off of the side of the thruster, it came off with a crack, and we slid in carefully, once inside we slid the vent back into place.
"Pelican drop ship bravo 132, this is Spartan team Zero, we have made entry to the engine,Over"
"This is Pelican drop ship bravo 132, we have secured the landing zone, no signs of a struggle in this area, all vehicles are intact, no bodies to be found.
We continued moving through the ship, still not finding any sign of a struggle or life for that matter, it seemed as if everyone had disappeared.
"This is Spartan team Zero to Pelican drop ship bravo 132, status report?"
There was only silence
"Drop ship over?"
Still nothing, I looked at Anthony, "We need to get to the drop ship now"
Carefully we crept to the hangar, we approached the drop ship, there were no signs of our crew. At first I didn't understand what had happened until I caught sight of a small scratch on the wall of the pelican and saw the small red blips on my radar. I turned and fired my assault rifle into nothingness, sure enough the bullets sparked against the shields of an elite using a cloaking device, instantly the stealth array went off, revealing the ugly Elite beneath, a large blue blade hung from its hand, it lunged for Anthony and I unloaded my entire clip on it, finally one of my bullets got through the shield and caught it in the face.
"Ant, get the pelican off the ground and outside the ship, then I want you to pick me up in twenty minutes, if I'm not back by then I want you to go back to HQ." I said
"You got it"