[Last updated: 06/10/18]

It's about time! After about a year on this ship, I finally received some shore leave. I knew just where I wanted to go. I arranged transport aboard the nearest ship that was heading to Earth; it was an old colony ship retrofitted into a merchant vessel, dubbed the UNSC Pretty Penny. After a few days of being in Slipspace, we jumped back into normal space about 10 Au from Sol.

We docked at the Quito orbital tether and I walked around the platform as it descended through the super rings – I eventually found a view I liked of the rapidly growing landscape around me and stayed there until I got to the surface; once there, I caught an automated shuttle to the New Phoenix suburbs. I was going to go see the only family I had left: my grandparents and my little brother. I had already called ahead of time; they knew I was coming. I dug a credit chip out of one of my pockets and paid the toll before I grabbed my standard issue duffel bag and threw it over my back and made my way towards the front door.

Before I could get close though, it burst open and a small form came at me and hugged me around the middle; my little brother. I ruffled his dark hair and greeted him. "He-ey squirt! How've you been?" The only thing I could understand from him was that Grandma had just set down dinner and she and Grandpa were waiting for us; he was excitedly talking a mile a minute. I let him pull me inside with a grin across my face before he ran off to his seat. I greeted my grandparents, and just as I was sitting down, my Grandmother gasped and said that she had forgotten dessert in the refrigerator. I smiled warmly and said, "No problem, I'll get it." I went into the kitchen and retrieved it from the fridge. The next thing I knew, there was a blinding flash of red, the sounds of my family screaming, accompanied some manner of searing sound. I instantly dropped the dessert and rushed back into the dining room. The only things I found were a room devoid of family, a thick cloud of ash everywhere in the room, and an overpowering stench of fear in the air. Not even their clothes remained.

I panicked and rushed outside and ran down a few streets; everywhere I went there was that overwhelming smell of ash … there wasn't any living thing left within sight – people … dogs … anything. It was suddenly perfectly silent … in a city of over six million; all except for me. It seems like the entire population of the city just up and turned to ash when my back was turned.

I looked around myself and fell to my knees in despair; I began to scream to the heavens as I beat my fists into the pavement. I felt my cheeks burn as hot streams of tears ran down them. I gritted my teeth in anger. It wasn't fair. IT JUST WASN'T FAIR! I wanted them back; everything else had been taken from me … everyone. I screamed louder and louder for someone … anyone ... I screamed myself ragged. I began to hear something sounding like a doorbell … it got louder and louder

I woke up with a start in a cold sweat. I was, of course, in my bunk in S deck aboard the UNSC Infinity with a concerned intangible orange person kneeling on the ground at the edge of my bunk, focused solely on me; it was the ships' AI, Roland. (He was sarcastic and a bit of a prick at times, but he had his moments) He wore a World War II era pilot's garb: fur lined leather flight jacket, flight goggles, leather pants … the works.

"Are you ok, Spartan? I detected elevated vital signs in your quarters, and an alarming amount of … screaming." I was quite out of breath from the exertion and it took me a moment to get the air necessary to respond, and when I did, it only came out in a halting rasp. "I'm sorry to worry you, Roland. I was just having one hell of a nightmare." He grimaced slightly and nodded in sympathy; it seemed even he had a heart buried somewhere in his code. "New Phoenix?" I looked down and nodded before I began to rub the sleep from my eyes. "Yeah." He wore a reassuring smile and said, "Don't worry, I've already notified medical personnel and they should be – ah, here they are now." He turned his head towards the door where a doctor and a psychologist were just coming in. Before he left, he looked at me and said, "Captain Lasky wants you prepped and mission ready, but I'll request some time for you to recover. You have an urgent mission in one hour." I looked up in surprise. "An hour!? I thought I wasn't due for another mission for another day or so!" He stopped, turned his head and observed me with a raised eyebrow, "Simply put, plans have changed. Once you're ready, you and your team will be briefed of the mission en route to your destination. Oh, and you should probably drop by the mess hall and eat something. I hear it sometimes helps with nightmares." He disappeared into orange particles which scattered into nothing.

I let out a long sigh before getting up and started following the medical staff to wherever they were going. This scenario wasn't exactly new, I've read the reports and heard the chatter; similar situations have been happening to crew members on every ship in service to anyone who had had family in New Phoenix.

After I passed my medical and psychological diagnostics, I washed my face in the examination room's sink and looked at myself pensively in the mirror. In short, I looked like hell. I had a haunted look in my face from lack of sleep, my short black hair was disheveled, and there were bags under my eyes. Something on the far wall caught my attention; it was an old, faded recruitment poster for the Spartan-IV program someone had apparently put up and forgot about. I stared at it while a series of painful memories washed over me; namely the escape from my home planet as it burned, the death of my family, and eventually my training and augmentation as a Spartan-IV.

I sat back down in one of the chairs in the room and recalled a picture of my family – that is to say my grandparents and my brother – both of which were now dead of course as a result of the events surrounding the arrival of the Forerunner ship in orbit far above New Phoenix. I, of course, wasn't there; I was aboard the Infinity fighting the newest threat to Humanity. Fighting to protect what was near and dear to me; something I had failed miserably at. A few moments went by as I silently grieved for my lost family; it was a wound still very fresh and tender. A few seconds passed before I sat straight and slapped myself in the face with both hands and grinned, trying to force myself to brighten up. It was fine to mourn the dead, but it wouldn't be healthy to live in the past. They wouldn't want that for me. I'll try to live my life the best I can from now on, since they no longer can.

I dropped by the mess hall and ate an early lunch and made my way back to the small tram station nearby I had taken to get here and was off back to S deck. The Infinity was three and a half miles long, which would take WAY too long on foot (Even for a Spartan) which is why the designers had thought to add in a tram system to swiftly move from one end of the ship to the other. Five minutes later, I made it to S deck. S deck was the part of the ship where Spartans get outfitted with their gear by automated machines. It also housed a massive barracks and an armory.

Since I had some time to spare, I made my way around and eventually found my four teammates prepping for the mission; one of which was one of the few original Spartan II's who 'washed out' of the program with what were nowadays mild complications. He was resuscitated from cryosleep and after some mildly risky operations, was eventually cleared by medical staff and given a set of Spartan – IV SOLDIER-class Mjolnir armor. His name was Tyler-042, and was currently cleaning and performing maintenance tasks on his heavily modified gravity hammer that he used during combat. Next to him sitting on the floor were Spartans Matt and Lorrie; Matt was cleaning his DMR and Sniper Rifle and Lorrie was loading bullets into clips for her two personalized M6 pistols from a few boxes around her. They had already donned their armor: Matt had DEADEYE-class armor, and Lorrie had ARGUS-class.

I walked over and greeted my team. "Hey guys. Where's Alice?" Tyler looked up and gestured over to a nearby mantis, whose hatch was open and faint squeals could be heard from inside. "She's drooling over the new mantis type." I laughed slightly. "Yeah, I should've guessed. Listen, I'll go get geared up and meet you guys in the pelican for launch and debrief." With nods and affirmations all around, I headed off to my assembler to get my armor on.

The metal gangway that went down the center of the lower portion of S-deck had designated locations for Spartans to interface with their armor bays; I walked down the gangway until I came up on mine. Officially known as Da Vinci, the armor bays were multi-axis assembly systems that aided a Spartan in the quick mounting and removal of their armor. All in all, the machine was shaped like a ring; there were places to place the feet and hands so they could have Mjolnir attached to them. Moored above the armor bay was a reinforced metallic track system that carried the bay from its standby position to where was needed under some lights. Under the end was a large, white, squat cylindrical hub of machinery that housed, supported, and powered the units below it. Around that was a small track that allowed various tools on articulated arms to orbit the assembler to where they were needed. Hanging from the underside of the hub was a six axis cambered gyro mount system that was large enough for an average sized Spartan to hang on to.

I stepped into the machine onto the two raised metal plates on the bottom of the assembly with molded metal armor that hinged away from each foot from the toes and the heels, respectively. As I stepped onto them, those sections of metal were folded and locked into place around my feet, effectively making my shoes. I then reached through the forearm armor and grasped the applicator handles. The forearm armor components were then screwed inwards from four "petals" by the automated tools grasped in the arms of the armor bay; as expected from the name, the components covered my arms from the wrist up almost to the elbow. As this was going on, it assembled the lower body armor – that is to say from your shins to the cod piece. For the next part, I kept my grip on the machine with my hands, and it retained a grip on me as it hadn't yet released my feet. Thusly secured, the machine changed my orientation so I was more level with the floor. The cuirass went on next; a metallic hatch folded away under me and the front half was lowered down as the back half rose from the floor and was fastened into place around the shoulders and near the waist. After the cuirass was assembled, my pauldrons were then attached on my upper arms. All said and done, the entire process lasted about a minute.

As I was righted in orientation, the helmet was lowered onto my head and after a brief time spent looking at progress bars for updates, the HUD came online. I was now in my blue, white, and silver experimental NOBLE-class Mjolnir. The machine then released me; I heard a voice in my ear, "Are you sure you're ready?" It was Roland again, checking in. "Yeah Roland. Everything's a go. I'm good." A satisfied grunt. "Very good. Most of your team is ready and in the pelican. In interest of time, I'd suggest equipping yourself for close combat situations; I'd tell you more, but you'll learn everything soon enough. Good luck." He ended the transmission. I opened up a channel on Teamcom, "Hey guys, let me get my gear and I'll be over in a bit." Matt radioed back, "It's fine. We're still waiting for Alice to get out of her new friend and get her ass over here." A second went by and we heard the sound of metal falling on other metal followed by feminine cursing. "Alice, you ok?" I radioed in. "Yeah, I just got turned around and lost track of time. On my way." Alice may be a little klutzy from time to time, but she was our team's engineer (And resident genius) and she was damn good at it.

As this exchange was going on I picked up a shotgun, a DMR, and a handful of sticky grenades. I fixed the shotgun to the magnetic plates diagonally along my back, the DMR went on my left hip. The grenades were then magnetically fixed to places along my waist for easy reach.

I made my way over to the pelican just as Alice did. We exchanged nods and boarded the aircraft. We lifted off and once we made it far enough from Infinity, made the jump to Slipspace. (Thanks to new advances brought to us by the Engineers) Once the jump was done and the miniature Slipspace drive powered down, a small doughnut of material separated from the ceiling and floated at chest level and displayed helmet cams from combat holographically. (Now this was new to me; just how augmented were these pelicans, now?)

A voice popped into life over the intercom as if to answer my mental question, "Hello ladies and germs, I'm Mira and I'll be your pilot today. Now, the mission you guys are tasked with takes you to an as of yet unnamed and uninhabited system in the Canis Majoris constellation. As you may recall from the accident reports, we had a (Relatively) small cloaked ship of unknown class – presumably Covenant loyalist in origin – attach to the Infinity. Once there, they covertly infiltrated the ship and made off with one of our Engineers that goes by the name of …" She paused for a second, "Slightly Shifts? Well, that's what he goes by. And as if that weren't bad enough, they somehow got ahold of a number of highly experimental SOEIV's … We're still scratching our heads about how they managed that one …" I suddenly had an amusing mental image of the Elites making grunts do all the work and I couldn't help but smile slightly, despite the serious situation. A few questions were asked as to how or why this happened. "We could be here all day asking questions like that. The fact of the matter is the top brass, not to mention ONI, wants them back yesterday, and that's why you're all here for."

"Anyway, the ship was of course fired upon and its cloak was disabled. It was tracked to the system and then its engines too were disabled. However, extraction has not commenced yet because the ship has since drifted into an asteroid field surrounding the larger of the systems' two gas giants. Here's where we come in. I navigate us around the rocks and get you guys into the ship; we extract the engineer, and get the hell out of there as we blow the ship's core. As I said before, the Captain wants this cleaned up yesterday, and preferably quietly as the top brass doesn't want to admit that it fucked up. So, you know what that means: this is an off-the-books mission. Any questions?" All said 'No mam.' "Good. Since it'll take about a half hour to get to the system at this speed, settle in and enjoy the ride, ok?"

I sighed and looked out at the rear of the ship out the small window into the total black of Slipspace, thinking. Of all the engineers on the ship, it had to be this one. I knew this particular Engineer. I would say we were friends, but I was unsure if Engineers make that deep of emotional bonds. Even so, I was walking along a corridor just exploring the ship on my off time one day and saw him float into view from some overhead duct, pull off a bulkhead panel like it was nothing, lay it against one of the walls, and start to repair what was behind. He was repairing some circuitry and was looking around for a section he had just manipulated. In the process of repair, the section had been placed on the end of a flat component, and was sent flying as he quickly placed some larger component on the other end that ended up resting on one of its' uppermost gas bladders and it couldn't reach behind it far enough. How he didn't see that coming was beyond me; I mean the guy has three sets of eyes after all. He was visibly frustrated, so I decided to lend a hand.

I walked up and got the piece and handed it out to him. He looked at me with his six obsidian eyes and blinked in sequence before reaching a tentacle out and gently taking it from me. We spent the next half hour or so 'bonding' over repairing items. (It wasn't like I had anything else to do for the next few hours or so, and if I could help somebody along the way why not?) After the work in the immediate area was done, he put it back in proper order and turned to me with two of his tentacles extended and loosely coiled before him pointed towards me and made a few gestures. He was attempting to communicate with me. I cocked my head, confused. After a few attempts at this, he lowered his head and shook it. (Huh, it seems some body language is universal after all.) He reached up and touched both sides of my helmet with his tentacles around where the data access ports were. I saw that he was loading a program into my helmet's computer. He retracted his tentacles and tried gesturing again, this time noticeably slower. I heard a mechanical voice in my helmet speaker, Can you understand me? "Yes?" He nodded apparently in approval. Good. Thank you for your assistance with my maintenance tasks. I am known as Slightly Shifts. "No problem. I was just trying to help someone in need." I extended my hand and offered my name.

I was jolted back to awareness as we dropped out of Slipspace. Our pilot opened up the coms again to address us, "Well, I have good news. I have found an easy point of entry to the ship. The ship in question seems to have suffered a catastrophic hull breach by way of asteroid. Get ready to go guys." The intervening time was spent getting to the ship and landing on it. The five of us activated our Gravboots and after opening the hatch one by one carefully made our way inside the ship.

I was the last one out of the ship. Before I could venture out into the void, a private com channel opened up for me, it was our pilot. "Could you pick me up? I could assist you … and provide a running commentary from the peanut gallery?" Amused at her humor, I asked her how I would go by going that. A panel opened up on one of the walls near the cockpit which exposed humming circuitry which glowed in the partial light of the bay; I surmised it probably housed the computer for the pelican and something partially ejected from a recess. Was … was that an AI chip?! "Well, what are you standing around gawking at me for? You waiting for in invitation or something? Put me in and let's go!" I did as she said and made my way into the now derelict ship by carefully taking a hold of a torn piece of structure, I flipped my orientation so that it was more in line with this section of the ship and pushed off down into the hole in one, smooth motion. It seemed that some systems were partially functional as when I got within ten feet off the ground I passed into a field of gravity and fell to the floor. I groaned at the unexpected impact as Tyler came over and helped me up.

"You ok, chief?" I groaned and replied, "Yeah, I think I'll survive. But how are we supposed to find our way around this wreck?" Look! Over there, a data access terminal. I need to interface with it. I shrugged and connected her to it. "Woah, it looks just as bad in here as the ship does. Hang on, I think I can get a few things …" A short pause, "Huh. Apparently this is some kind of Covenant stealth ship, presumably made just before the end of the war. There's no ship class designator, so it's safe to assume it was a prototype; it was christened with the tentative name: Twilight Harbinger. Ah … here we are; a map. Pull me."

I inserted her back in and she kindly laid out a wireframe construction of the ship and superimposed it onto our visors. We made it through pockets of gravity and zero-g, navigating around the odd corpse of the now deceased crew and eventually made it to what passed for a brig for the Covenant. They were little more than pockets in the walls that were barred with energy fields; nothing harmful, but you still couldn't get though it from the inside. The control panel was emitting an alarming amount of sparks and each of us could tell we shouldn't go near that area. Thankfully, Slightly Shifts's cell was near the door on the opposite side of the control panel. I motioned for them all to move back and shot the base of the emitter and the field stuttered and collapsed. Slightly Shift made a flurry of motions that I didn't catch, so he made them again slightly slower and the software caught up. Quickly, the ship is beginning to fall into the gas giant. We need to get to the bridge! I relayed this information to my teammates. I could tell that they wanted to ask, but now really wasn't the time for questions, and they could sense it. We ran to the bridge and Slightly Shifts went over to a console that was intermittently lighting up. He tried to interface with it when all power was suddenly cut from the bridge. We need someone in the engine room to reroute power to the bridge and the Slipspace drive! Catching on, Alice took Matt by the arm and before he could question, she stated "Come on! We need to get to the engine room to reroute power to the bridge!"

I called after Alice, "And the Slipspace drive!" She quickly acknowledged it and began heading to the engine room with Matt. I turned to Tyler, "You know how to fly this thing?" He canted his head slightly, thinking quickly before shrugging slightly and saying he'd give it a try. He got prepared at the helm and I asked Slightly Shifts what the plan was. My idea is to use the momentum generated by the gas giant's gravity well to get us to speed and open a Slipspace portal before we get crushed. We don't need to worry about a destination, so much as it's just about anywhere else but here. "Oh. Well hopefully we can pull this off and not die." He nodded in agreement. Indeed. With really nothing else to do, Lorrie and I stood near a wall out of the way and was grasping onto a structural support.

A comms channel opened up – it was Alice. "We've got a little problem here; there might not be enough power for both the bridge and the drive. I took power from every system besides the drive, but it may not be enough"! I groaned internally. "It'll have to be enough, Alice, it's all we've got!" Throughout the ship we could now feel the occasional impact of space debris and the ship groaning from the stress. The helm came partially online and Tyler took control and did his best at station keeping what with full navigation inoperable. We must activate the drive now! I shouted, "Alice! Do it now!" A holographic image of the gas giant appeared and was growing in size alarmingly fast; it started to blur as a Slipspace portal began to form. Just before it fully formed, it collapsed and an explosion rocked what was left of the ship. "ALICE! MATT! YOU ALRIGHT?!" I heard a cough and a groan over the radio. "Yeah, we got out of there just in time, but the drive's trashed and the explosion destabilized the core. We're screwed." A few seconds later, we felt a small explosion and a crunch of metal. "Uh, Mira? What the hell was that?" She tapped into the ships' external surveillance and cursed. "That was our ticket out of here getting swatted off of us by a meteor. Just as well really, we wouldn't have been able to use it in this mess anyway. Although it is a shame to see such a ship wasted like that. I was just getting to like it."

It was about then that I got the idea, and had them follow me to the cargo hold. Tyler objected, "Hey! What about keeping the ship in line?" I shook my head, "No use. Come on! I have an idea that just might see us out of this mess." He shrugged and abandoned the controls to follow me. I reached the cargo hold and activated the internal illumination procedure and purple lights sputtered and flickered to life in sequence revealing the pods that they stole. Perfect.

Lorrie commented, "Well, I suppose it's better than standing around waiting for the inevitable." We all quickly stored our gear and got in our pods. Electricity started to arc everywhere as the static electricity built up from the rarified gasses as we went through atmospheric entry. She must have set some kind of sensor or timer because Alice said, "That's it, the core's about to blow! It's been real nice knowing you guys … it's been fun." She left the team com channel open and each gave words of acknowledgement as everything faded to white.

[Oh no! Is this the end of Fireteam Indigo? … Of course not. See you guys next time!]