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The following is a fan-based

FICTION

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"Like the Old Days"

May 20 2528 - Hour 2210

SGTMAJ Avery Junior Johnson

Camp New Hope, Planet of Victoria

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If there's something that put a good smile on Sergeant Major Johnson's face this late in the night is a good operation done by the Marines.

It's been a lengthy few months of being knee deep into muddy shit, but while ONI had pulled some sneaky tricks on him to cover their asses, that hadn't stopped the Spartan-I member from finding out a new possible source after the 'Massive Rebel Attack' on their industry while Reach was burning. Sons of bitches those behind that, but Johnson didn't care much for the grunts.

He wanted those that had planned and hired these clowns to threaten humanity's lifeline like that. He wanted blood and he wanted it drawn at once. That was as much as the HIGHCOM had requested from him, and he was sure as hell going to get to the bottom of this crappy rabbit hole.

And this led him to Victoria. The Rebels that they had investigated had plenty of data about the planet and of some general plans to establish a base there.

The Planet didn't have much to flaunt about compared to other colonies, but something was really suspicious when he learned that reports of Insurrection Activity within the planet had been ignored. Especially when the fucking planet was being used as a secret warehouse for nukes.

The HIGHCOM authorized a large detachment to tag along for the ride, seeing his point when he made it clear that the next assault may as well a 'killing blow' to the military's reputation. The fact that the rebels caught on the act came from this particular cell was disturbing, but then, as he was able to get on the planet with his squads and get a network of scouts to check what was going on, he realized what he was up to.

'General' Howard Graves was the remaining leader of the United Rebel Front (URF), with his two co-founders having been killed years ago. It was just him, a lot of fanatics, plenty of unused resources and now the chance to secure a genuine threat to the UNSC.

Johnson didn't need more to get operations started to bust the fucker out of his rathole. While he usually wouldn't be too harsh agaisnt rebels, this bunch was one of the worst and clearly one that was there just to satisfy ONI's hunger for scapegoats to gain more powers.

The URF was aware of their arrival and approach, and the marine force deployed was briefly matched in a hours-long stalemate by rebels that could rely on some expensive equipment. Once again, they weren't bothering hiding their suspicious advantage.

It took a while, but Johnson pushed through and personally led the charge into the final compound. 'Camp New Hope' was the core of the rebels' resources. Turrets had the UNSC soldiers pinned for a while, but the Scorpion tanks cleared that obstacle without any issues. There were losses on the marines' side, but those were temporarily ignored as Johnson finally got in the middle of this mess.

The camp was being cleared by the time Graves had been found and incapacitated. His body was being dragged into the forward base established just out the camp's gate to be interrogated. But while there was an effort to handle the further cleaning up, Johnson was notified by something new and... bad. Really bad.

"Sir, you need to come here just a sec."

Scowling, Johnson turned to the soldier. "What is it now, marine?"

"Problems, sir. Big ones."

Shifting the cigar in his lips, the Sergeant Major paced up to the technician and studied the terminal's screen. He recognized that son of a bitch's face everywhere since he was the guy that trained him to be the lucky SOB that made him proud on Harvest. The issue was that the mirth was brief as he caught up on why the picture was there. A bounty. Some poor fucker put a bounty on one of their best soldiers.

"The hell you mean Log got a bounty?" He half-barked, surprised by the number put behind the reward. "I want a name."

"ONI, sir. And... it's not the only thing."

If things couldn't get worse, the next development further pissed off the Sergeant as he felt his mood drop fast. Another screen manifested and Johnson almost dropped his cigar as he realized why there was a picture of a nuke being loaded in a ship.

He didn't know what this meant in the fullest, but that nuke shouldn't have been in rebels' possession. None had been missing from the lengthy report established by the well-defended warehouse. So this one was actually from ONI too but... why the fuck they were doing this?

"How long ago?"

"A few weeks ago sir."

Which would be enough to somehow slip that bomb in the UNSC Roman Blue or one of the ships tagging along with it.

"Where is it now?" He needed to know more. Maybe he was overthinking this but-

"It has left already, sir. We don't know yet," The technician groaned. "Sir, we need-"

"That's my business, marine. Get me the coordinates, I will take care of this."

Before he could leave, the technician cracked another encrypted file. It was a document. It was a signed one at that. Grinning as he recognized who the bitch behind all of this was, Johnson fixed his cigar as he knew this was the good shit he had been looking for in the last few months.

"Send a copy to the big ship. I want it sent to the desk of the big boss at once," Johnson ordered, the marine nodding as he did so.

Turning around and walking away, the Sergeant Major turned on his Comms.

"Captain, I have an important message for the UNSC Roman Blue."

"How important?"

"They may have a nuke onboard and it's being controlled by rebels."

...

"Sergeant, I need a repeat on that. What do you mean there's a nuke in that ship?"

"I didn't mince my words, sir. ONI is going full-on nuclear to kill their biggest issue."

And like hell the Sergeant Major was allowing those fuckers to get through with that shit.

AN

URAH! JOHNSON IS IN THE HOUSE!

Also, I will be honest, I have been thinking this for a while: I am contemplating ending the story earlier than I planned and skip a few arcs. Why? I have a few reasons:

1) Progress had been slow since I have put more efforts in new ideas;

2) I want to make those ideas in proper stories and some of those are gold from what most of my readers say;

3) This one is actually a tiny reason, but I have to bring it up: someone has been harassing me on the FFN of this story for writing HumanXSangheili smut. I can understand a single review or two, but this guy went out of his way to go 'offline' and write several Guest-tier reviews. Luckily for me (and for readers that don't like to find this sort of shit in the reviews page), I have Guest Moderation on so if you write vile shit it is not going to be published.

With that being said, I am not going to drop it. I just want to tilt it closer to the finish line, get some of the relationships and finalization of the characters' developments done and just wrap up the story. Doesn't sound too harsh, right?