Falling. Through the sky, he fell, weightless. In the orbit of a human planet, Spartan Noble Six was sinking through space. He looked ahead of him. The Covenant Corvette was flying above, and he was floating away. Jorge had thrown him out of the ship so he could manually detonate the slipspace bomb they had brought aboard. Six looked at his hand. Jorge's dogtags were in his clenched fist. The bomb detonated. Six looked up. An enormous void consumed the Corvette, and its entire midsection, along with Jorge, was disintegrated.

Jorge's last words rang in Six's ears.

"Tell 'em to make it count." He had said.

Six woke up with a shock. His armor was gone. He was wearing the thick black bodysuit of his Mark V armor, but it was opened up. Several suction cups, needles, and straps were connected to him. He tried to lift his arm, but he couldn't, for some reason. He looked down at his left arm.

It wasn't his. There were metal pieces and joints, screws and bolts. There were wires and pipes and little metal washers and all sorts of other technology that he didn't know the names for. It looked a bit like Kat's robotic arm, but it was thicker, and looked stronger. He tried to lift it again. Nothing.

He had forgotten what had happened. He tried to recall the events before he was here, wherever this was. There was a grenade, and he had tried to… No. He HAD saved John. And the grenade had blown his arm off…

And now he was here.

"Hello? Anyone…?" Six said with a hoarse voice.

Only silence greeted him.

"Great." He mumbled to himself.

A machine to his right made a ticking noise, and a few others beeped. He felt a cold sensation in his chest, where one of the needles was. His eyes started to close, but not before he caught a glimpse of a few marines outside. At least there were humans.

He blacked out.

He woke up later, what he assumed to have been at least a few hours. He looked back down at his body. The bodysuit was now closed, and his armor was back on him. The left shoulder was disintegrated. There was nothing keeping him from getting out of bed now, except for the blanket that was over his lower abdomen. He pulled the blanket down and sat upright. He used both arms, and nearly fell off of the bed trying to get up. His muscles felt so weak. He tried to stand. He couldn't. He tried again. He stood with one foot, then shifted his weight to both. He had trouble standing. He had never felt this much pain in his life, next to when his arm was actually blown off. He shuffled over to one of the pieces of medical equipment and leaned on it. His vision was a little blurry. He rubbed his eyes. His vision cleared. He made the mistake of trying to push himself up with his now fully operational prosthetic. The strength of the arm was almost enough to push him to the floor. For some reason he thought that it would be a struggle. He walked slowly to the opening of his tent and pushed through it.

Several Marines stood up and saluted him. One of these marines was, predictably, Clancy Maegan.

Six saluted the marines back and kneeled down to catch his breath.

"Where am I?" Six asked.

"You're still with us, if that's what you're asking." Clancy said to him as he walked towards him. "Good to see you're okay, sir."

"You too, Clancy." Six said as he patted him on the back with his new arm.

"Ouch. You pat hard." Clancy said.

"Sorry. Where's John?" Six asked. "And my Helmet?"

"They put your helmet right here there." Clancy said as he grabbed Six's helmet that lay next to the entrance of the tent. "As for the Chief, he's headed out on another mission."

"How long was I out?" Six asked as they walked.

"I dunno, maybe… five, six hours."

"Six hours? Goddamn. I miss anything?"

"Cortana found something big. Something called the "Silent Cartographer""

"What the hell is that supposed to be, then?"

"Apparently, it's some sort of map room on Halo."

"Anyone figure out what this 'Halo' is?"

"Well, if the Covenant harness its power, they can use it as a weapon."

"Then we can't let them get their hands on it. I'm going to see what I can do about helping John on his little mission."

"But Six..." Clancy said. "You should probably get some more rest. After all, you did just get your arm vaporized, and, well…"

"Well what?" Six replied.

"No offense, but you're weak right now. You need to get your strength up." Clancy said.

Six chuckled. "No rest for the wicked, Maegan." He shot back.

Six snatched the helmet out of Clancy's hand and jogged slowly towards a pelican, ready for combat mentally, but not physically. His suit was helping him carry himself a bit, and he was less sore, but not nearly combat ready. Six didn't care though. If he thought he was ready, then he was, end of story.

He was a stubborn bastard that way.

Sorry for the SUPER short chapter this time. I'm getting friendly complaints that I don't write enough per chapter, so I will try to improve how long each of my chapters from now on will be, hopefully getting them to be around 2,000 words or so.

I'm contemplating trying to fit a few changes to the story in the next couple of chapters, but I'm a little unsure if I can pull it off in style, as I don't really know as much about the Halo universe as I used to.

Another side note, this fanfic WILL be going from Halo: CE to whatever the newest Halo is when I'm done, be it Halo 4 or Halo 5: Guardians, which sounds and looks goddamn great. I hope that the love that some people have for my writing has enough staying power for quite a long time, and it would make me very happy if it did.

Keep reading, Wolfgang!

~Husky