UNSC Vociferous in orbit over Ascella IV

March 19, 2558

The observation center was just behind the handling operations area where the handlers Lusana had lectured were at their stations. Some were chatting about to one another to share information and others had kept a keen eye on the sensors that the overflying drone was providing.

The simulation was about to start.

Lusana and the rest of Eon were huddled around a central holotank with a dozen displays of different feeds for the five fireteams partaking in the op.

"Let's begin. Roll out Covenant module four hundred and fifty two, mode Tango."

"Initiating Warzone simulation," The announcer spoke in a monotone voice, "Fight through objectives of increasing difficulty."

It began. The Spartans were set to land in a map called Sanctum, with a large desert half and a large jungle half on a sangheili planet. A large temple was in the center with the upper floors being where 'Xiva was said to be hiding. The Spartans would drop in pods, take the UNSC outpost to the west and begin their assault on the temple.

It all went fairly smoothly; there was a lot of cannon fodder of grunts, jackals and a few of the more inexperienced elites. Although they outnumbered the Spartans five to one, they were skilled enough to eliminate the occupants of the garage where they would briefly asses the situation and formulate a plan to take the temple.

"Hey," The rest of Eon turned to see a breathless Austal at the doorway, "Sorry I'm late boss. Call took a little longer than I thought,"

"You're on uniform duty like I said," Lusana smoothly replied before noticing that he was a little fidgety, "Everything alright?"

"Yeah! Just excited for the simulation!"

Fowler shot him a look, "Since when does auditing Warzone sims excite you? If I remember right, you bitched the last time we lost because the other team wrecked our core! Your words were in exact; I fuckin hate Warzone!"

"You try defending a core against guys with rocket launchers while you just have a half dead energy sword!"

Pine put a hand in between them, even though he knew it was just more of the duo's playful bickering, "You're not participating in this Warzone Austal, you're auditing it to see how the new Spartans are performing."

"Right," Marcus threw a death glare at Brett before taking the offered datapad, "What's my duty?"

"You're to observe your specialty, specifically the recon."

Staring at the screen, he had found an error within just a few seconds, "For starters, Fireteam Zephyr looks to be designated as the point squad and they're bunched too close together. All it would take to wipe them out is a single wraith shot." Staring back at the screen, he flipped the viewpoint to another Spartan's VISR. Transcript rolled on the side, showing what the members were saying to one another.

From the looks of it, Zephyr and a second fireteam named Dragon were the point teams. The base had been liberated and a pair of warthogs had been found still operational. The teams were getting ready to head out. There were rumors of a requisition system for powerful weapons being installed in the simulator for the next update, but not much else on it had been released. They had to go with what they had at the time.

"They're gearing up,"

Lusana looked over, "Rolling out Round 2 with a trio of Ghost Marauders. Analyze the data from the simulators to take the temple."

At his command, three gold plated ghosts were dropped off by a phantom and with a full compliment of Covenant troops.

Dragon spotted them first and marked their three targets for the warthog crews.

"We'll draw the foot mobiles out. The alpha bravos on the fifty fours are yours,"

"Hmm," Fowler's eyes lit up and he gave off an impressed smirk, "That's good. Keep the vehicle on vehicle combat strict. Although Dragon needs the assistance of Volt and what the hell is Zephyr doing scouting the temple? The hostiles don't spawn there until the third wave!"

"That's a big error." Pine pointed out, "They're heading deep into enemy territory already without backup. If this was real and the temple was occupied, they'd be slaughtered."

"I could see their idea," Bailey added, "Well…even though it is a simulation and way different from the real thing, they might be having an assessment on the terrain."

The men stared at her as if she spoke another language, but Pine got it first.

"She does have a point. While they may have already done sims on this map, having a knowledge of the layout of your target structure while it's inactive does prove to be advantageous. Even though it's not a traditional practice, especially if the real thing is crawling with bad guys, I have to applaud them on the unorthodox tactic. Wish we would have thought of that."

"We played by the rules remember?" Fowler said.

"That's true,"

"Let's give them a little surprise." Lusana checked the progress on the main battle. The other four fireteams were still locked in combat against the three ghost marauders. The hogs had taken a beating, but managed to barrage one with chaingun fire to tear it into pieces. One elite had ignited a plasma grenade and tossed it towards the closest one. The bluish orb stuck to the vehicle's hood and in that split second; the gunner had seen it coming, shouting to his comrades. He had made it off, but the Spartan riding shotgun hadn't noticed, prompting the driver to shove him off and quickly back away to prevent anyone else from being caught in the explosion. The warthog was completely destroyed and the driver had been killed, but there was only one Spartan casualty.

That was way better than three.

The last warthog was also on its last legs, so the driver of that one kept it further back to allow its gunner to pepper and suppress the area with fire. Many of the grunts had thought the retreat was intentional because they were damaged and wandered out of cover. The Spartan manning the chaingun easily cut them down. As the smart ones stayed in cover, another fireteam came through the narrow passageways to their left to flush them out. The first victims fell to rifle fire and a pair of elites had jumped from cover in the open to run across. They quickly fell to the warthog.

In the meantime, Fireteam Dragon managed to corner the final ghost and brought it down with a few well placed frag grenades.

"Whew," Dragon lead breathed when the stragglers had been eliminated, "We barely survived that one,"

"This is ridiculous!" Fowler threw up his arms in frustration, "Barely?! Either you do survive or you don't! There's no gray area!"

"I'd actually disagree with you on that one brother,"

"Elaborate…please."

"Later," Eon's attention was turned to the third round, where the Spartan teams were assigned to take the temple and defend it from a Covenant assault.

"Holy," Brett's eyes widened at the opposition. "They better have better stuff than a beat up hog,"

The Covenant opposition included dozens of grunts, jackals, elites and even a hunter pair standing in between them and the temple. At the tunnel in the base, a single wraith emerged, spitting out a white blob that hung in the air for a moment before crashing down where a pair of Spartans stood a second before. They didn't stand a chance.

All of Eon cringed when they saw the duo get "vaporized". The death toll just went up. Nearly a fifth of the attacking Spartan force had been wiped out already.

"Wow." Bailey's voice was laced with uncertainty, "Is this for real?"

"This is some of the shit we faced,"

"Like Providence,"

The conversation immediately went to the wraith, easily the biggest threat on the field.

"Let's throw them a bone. Put a scorpion in the garage,"

"Yes sir."

The simulation had gone smoothly. After taking a few more Spartans, the temple had come under their control. They had dug in nicely to repel an assault even Eon had doubts about doing themselves.

However it fell apart when the simulation on 'Xiva had come up where they had to intercept his phantom before he escaped. They were able to use the scorpion to break through the armored line of banshees and two wraiths. A sniper had lined him up when he emerged to run to his vehicle, but had missed thrice. Once the dropship had exited the airspace, the op was over with an automatic failure.

Over a period of several hours; Eon went over the recordings in the sim's theater feature and watched over the various team performances.

While there was no one single flaw that compromised the mission, it was the combination of many mistakes.

The Vahkai's base was heavily guarded, but it wasn't impenetrable. Foot patrols could easily be avoided and all five teams agreed on bypassing the outer groups, knowing that they had roughly a half hour until the reinforcements would arrive to assist.

It could be a monumental decision since most of the Covenant groups consisted of easy targets that weren't suspecting the Spartans' presence. Eliminating them was a trivial task, but it wasted both time and ammunition. None of the teams suspected what stronger resistance was ahead, so they all opted to take a stealthier route and avoid their notice.

Further ahead, the dry desert terrain gave way to a more temperate and lush one. Grass weaved in the slight breeze and a dense forest lay in the background. Beyond the ancient temple erected in the center, more heavily armed Covenant guarded the camp.

Through the end of the op, the teams decided to split and cause a diversion just half a kilometer away. With the newly acquired scorpion tank, three of the fireteams charged forward, dishing out immense damage and drawing the attention of nearly the entire base.

Two wraiths had responded to the call, showing their rounded hulls and were subsequently blasted apart by the sheer power of the M990 smoothbore. The tank's driver laid several more shots into the main camp to cause chaos. Everything from buildings to infantry exploded.

At the same time, the second fireteam that had split off had established an overwatch position in order to eliminate 'Xiva. Their designated marksman, an Army sniper by the name of Jones was tasked with taking the shot.

All in all, despite their mistakes coming back to bite them with the patrols attacking from behind, it seemed as if the mission was going to be a success. 'Xiva's phantom appeared over the ridgeline and made its way down to a pad where it was partially sheltered with the wraiths and a couple of sangheili wielding fuel rods. Their weapons were easily absorbed thanks to the thick armor, but it had done a number and prevented the tank from advancing too far.

Jones had 'Xiva lined up in her scope ready to cap his head off, but had to temporarily take her eyes off his position when another patrol had appeared from behind, causing the rest of the fireteam to establish a defensive position in order to hold them off. By the time they had been eliminated, the Vahkai leader was already boarding his phantom in a hasty escape. The scorpion tried to shoot it down, however the cannon's loading was too lengthy and missed at such a long distance.

Eon had not finished their analysis, so they had given the other fireteams the rest of the day off with reminders to go over their recordings and submit a proposal for improvement in what they saw was flawed.

Right now, it wasn't looking good. The media had over exaggerated on the Spartans' recent lack of success and now much of the civilian population was beginning to question their effectiveness. While it was clear that the Spartan Twos and Threes were valuable; the Fours were still significantly less formidable.

"Has anyone seen Austal?" Fowler had asked the next morning when the majority of Eon, minus their Four was present at a table for breakfast. Ever since writing his own feedback on the Vociferous' Spartan group, he had not been acting like Austal. His mind was somewhere else.

"He better show the hell up," Two growled, "I'm not getting up at six in the damn morning and finding out he gets a free pass to sleep in."

"Whatever it is, I'll deal with it," Lusana finished, "It's up to me to decide what happens, but I need us to be on point. The last thing we need right now is for the critics to be hypocrites. We need to focus on the audit."

"With all due respect boss," Pine took a swig of orange juice, "What's the point in preparing everyone for the Vahkai if we're going to spearhead its destruction?"

"What happens if they come back?"

"Fair enough,"

"Hey guys," Everyone looked back up to see a tired-looking Austal with a tray of breakfast food. "Nobody gonna offer me a seat?"

"Austal," Lusana greeted, "I didn't see you at the briefing this morning,"

"Sorry boss. Got caught up in something."

"Nothing personal right?" It was definitely out of the ordinary when he missed a briefing. While under normal circumstances, he would've punished it by doing extra pushups or bear crawls, but he knew each Spartan worked out well past the exhaustion point of a normal human and the briefing he had missed had nothing important to relay on what they already knew.

"Nah,"

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Do you have your progress report finished?"

"No."

"You had all night to finish this. I thought I made it clear that not meeting our margins or having delays is not an option."

"Will you all shut up for once?" Austal snapped, giving everyone a harsh glare, "Look I know I fucked up and I'm sorry about that. Boss, I'll have the report done in an hour."

"You have half," Lusana declared, "But you can get yourself an extra half if you tell me what is going on. Since you began to evaluate last night, you haven't been yourself. I want to know why."

"Very generous of you sir," Austal ate quickly, "I'm still passing."

He scooped up his trash and made his way back up to the serving line to dump his tray without another word.

"RIT taught him well," Pine chuckled.

Bailey opened her mouth to ask what that was, but quickly figured it out; Resistance to Interrogation.

"RIT taught me a few things as well," Lusana stood up, "Let's assemble everyone in the War Games simulation in sixty. I'm going to find out what has Austal on edge,"

We all know what's going on with Austal! How do you think everyone's going to react to his news?

There's a little error on the previous two chapter, stating that the year was 2553, it is actually 2558. Sorry for the confusion.

Happy 117 day everyone. Thanks for reading and reviewing, you give my writing purpose.