When we got assigned to the Night Fox, one of the prowler's bays got repurposed into an arming room.
These days spartans have these fancy Brokkr machine gantry rigs that can get a Spartan in and out of their MJOLNIR power armor in less than five minutes, but back then it would take a team of five technicians fifteen minutes to get a Spartan into their armor.
I stood there in the bay with my arms stretched out in a t-pose as the techs attached the plates to my undersuit, using a tool to lock in the plates' magnetic fastenings.
Until the suit was activated, it was just an almost half-ton of coltan-titanium armor plating, but for me it felt comforting. Looking around the bay at my fellow spartans, it was easy to tell most of them felt the same way.
Even at the peak of human physicality with the augmentations, without the armor we were still just flesh and bone. If for some reason the bay we were standing in suffered a pressure breach we would be dead in seconds, or if we caught a stray bullet to the head then all our expensive training and augmentations would be for nothing.
But in our suits of olive-green MJOLNIR armor, we were something more.
Of course, it's nothing compared to what spartans get deployed with now. For us we just called it MJOLNIR, but apparently some ONI bean counter got upset about all the money Dr. Halsey was spending on the constant R&D for improvements on the suits, so to assuage the accountants the current and successor models got standardized designations. The current-gen stuff at the time was retroactively labelled the mark IV.
Nowadays, something like the mark VII comes with an improved liquid crystal layer to better enhance the strength of the wearer, an internal supply of biofoam for immediate first aid, energy shields, built in zero-g thrusters, and even has the capability to house a starship-grade artificial intelligence to facilitate real time cyber warfare, information gathering, and tactical analysis.
But for its time, the mark IV was still the most sophisticated piece of personal combat hardware ever fielded by the UNSC, and I had been made to wear it.
Getting tooled up in the armory may not have seemed exciting, but for us it was making life or death decisions. The Night Fox had plenty of gear available: rifles, shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers.
The Night Fox even carried a single scorpion tank for ground deployments. Choosing the right gear for the job could decide whether a mission would be a success or a failure before the op even started and here, we were limited to what we could carry, but the real piece de resistance was a set of HAVOK tactical nuclear warheads. A relatively low-yield, for a nuke, explosive device that was portable enough to carried by a single Spartan.
There were eight of them and each of us would be carrying one. Once planted on the CCS, they would turn the ship into an explosive pinata when detonated.
I saw John pull an MA5B off a rack. "Everyone take 7.62mm ammo," he said, "that way we can share if we have to."
I took one of the rifles and set to removing the standard issue underbarrel flashlight. For the tight hallways of a starship interior, I preferred an underbarrel shotgun.
I saw Linda eye one of the SRS99's. Her skill with the long-distance rifle was unparalleled. I'd seen her take extreme distance shots with the weapon that I hadn't considered possible, but she instead took one of the DMR's. It didn't have anywhere near the SRS99's stopping power but its shorter barrel would be less cumbersome to move in a ship corridor.
Grace loaded bags full of thermite and breaching charges to get through bulkhead doors. Malcolm and Fred both took cyber-intrusion kits that would be necessary to interface with the CCS's computers. Kelly had disassembled and was cleaning the components of an M90 shotgun when she noticed me lingering.
She hadn't donned her helmet yet and her blue eyes caught mine, the corners of her mouth stretched in an almost imperceptible smile. "Something on your mind, Ody?" The familiarity with which she said my name was something which never would have been used in front of an outsider. The only non-spartan who called us by our real names was Dr. Halsey.
I pulled an M6 SOCOM pistol from one of the weapon racks and examined it, pulling the slide back and checking the feeding ramp. "Something about this op doesn't feel right."
I didn't have Kurt-051's seemingly preternatural ability to sniff out danger, but to me something wasn't adding up. "I don't like how little intel we have."
John turned to face me. "The Night Fox was the closest UNSC asset. We're the advanced recon here for the UNSC counter attack," he said as he holstered his MA5B onto the maglock on his back.
"We're the only UNSC asset in the system right now," I said back. "If something goes wrong, we're on our own."
Linda chimed in. "I don't understand why the target cruiser is by itself. If the ship is still engine-capable like the captain says, wouldn't it make more sense to stay with the fleet? Keep safety in numbers?"
"That's what we would do, the Covenant aren't always on the ball." Kelly added.
That was true. In more than one engagement the UNSC had seen the Covenant's Sangheili commanders put honor before reason.
"At least if the ship is on its own, it'll take the rest of the fleet time to respond if our target gets out a distress call." She said.
I holstered the SOCOM, and grabbed a SPNKr rocket launcher.
Kelly raised an eyebrow at me.
"For emergencies." I said.
"All right Spartans, our deployment window is coming up," John said, "helmets on."
I watched as Kelly pulled on her mark IV helmet. Her blue eyes disappearing behind the gold mirrored visor and suddenly I was just staring at my own reflection. The others followed suit and I pulled my own on, the suit's pressure seal activated, a little readout appeared on my HUD confirming that all my suit systems were running correctly.
If I had known what was coming, what was going to happen, I would have said something to her there. What, I don't know. I must have replayed the moment in my mind a thousand times.
We grabbed our gear and made our way to the deployment bay.
Flying through space at almost twenty thousand kilometers per hour may sound exhilarating to you but for me it was almost peaceful.
In space there's nothing to provide drag or resistance so you don't feel anything. We had to maintain radio silence to avoid being detected during our approach, so aside from those moments when I had to fire my thruster pack to make course adjustments, there was nothing to break the silence except the sound of my own breathing.
Seeing all the stars race by was beautiful, like millions of little motes of light.
During the recovery period after the augmentation surgery, I had spent time in one of these zero-g sensory deprivation pods. That had been akin to floating in a void. Just pitch blackness. This, this was better. Just because I had been made for war didn't mean I couldn't appreciate the beauty of the universe.
Anyway, as we made our approach, Kursk and its moon got larger in view. We hit the moon's orbit and began decelerating, using the moon's gravity to slingshot ourselves the rest of the way towards the target. On their scanners we would have seemed no different to any other piece of detritus floating through space.
A CCS class cruiser is certainly a sight to behold, though most of the ones I had seen were usually destroying UNSC ships or glassing human planets. They have a strange flat oblong shape which narrows into a kind of bottleneck before widening back out into a kind of head at the prow of the ship.
The techs at ONI had theorized that the ship was designed to resemble some kind of underwater creature native to a Covenant world. I could definitely see where they were coming from.
I checked my trajectory again and adjusted as I decelerated. If I came in too fast I would either splatter myself against the CCS' hull like a bug hitting a windshield, or I would miss the target entirely just like the first time we had attempted this maneuver during the battle of Chi Ceti IV and I would have to hope that the Night Fox could come in to retrieve me after the rest of spartans completed the mission.
As a general rule, spartans hate being forced to sit on the sidelines, so missing would be unacceptable.
My thruster pack reached a full burn to slow me down. A readout appeared in my HUD.
5 seconds to impact.
4.
3.
John was the first to land, his mag-boots activated to keep him attached to the ship's hull, followed by the rest of Blue team, then Malcolm, Anton, and Grace.
2.
1.
I felt the shock of the impact as I landed. I was the last, all of us made it to the target. I activated my green status light to show I was in the clear. John gave the return signal to proceed. We traversed the hull of the ship until we reached an external airlock.
Fred took out his computer interface unit and connected it to the door. After a moment airlock cycled its pressure and opened. John gave the signal to proceed.
We were in.
As soon as the airlock pressurized, my suit began taking in air from the vessel's atmosphere to replenish all the air I had used during our insertion.
On UNSC ships the air always smelled sterile and metallic, almost like a hospital ward, but on the CCS the air seemed thick and oily. It could support human life, but it was designed for the comfort the Sangheili, the species which fulfilled the battlefield command role in the Covenant's caste system.
John activated his helmet's external speaker, forgoing the need for radio. "Alright. Green team, hit the port data recorder. Blue team, we'll take the starboard one. When the data is secure, plant your charges. Then we'll rendezvous for exfiltration."
"We got in undetected, no alarms, no enemy alerts. They don't seem to know we're here yet. Let's try and keep it that way," I added.
"It's going to be a hell of a time getting out of here if we don't," said Anton.
We moved out, I was at the front as Green team's point man, my MA5B shouldered and at the ready.
Behind me was Grace, then Malcolm, with Anton bringing up the rear. We ran into a few crew members on our way to the port data recorder. Grunts, mainly.
Unggoy. The squat little methane breathers.
They usually turned and ran when they caught sight of us. If they caught sight of us at all. There were a few jackals here and there too. The cawing-like sounds they made always gave them away before you saw them. Nothing else sounds quite like them.
Still, that feeling of unease was back.
I keyed a control and a door opened into an empty hallway. It wasn't the first one we had come across either. I activated my helmet speaker on low volume, loud enough not to carry too far and give us away.
"Something's not right," I said, "where is everyone? There should be more than this."
"Skeleton crew?" Malcolm replied. "Maybe they evac'd to one of the other cruisers or abandoned ship during the battle with the planetary fleet."
I knew it wasn't right.
When we reached the door to the port data core, the first warning sign was that the bulkhead was unlocked. No hacking or door breach required. I thought I saw a little slump in Grace's shoulders. She loved to blow things up and so far, it seemed like she had packed all those door breach charges for nothing.
We took up positions on the left and right of the door, two on each side. Malcolm gave the go ahead and I hit the key for the door to open. We brought our rifles up.
Nothing.
Not one grunt, not one jackal, not one elite.
Covenant security protocols could be lacking but never this bad.
Malcolm handed me his computer-interface device.
"Ody, download the data recorder's info. We'll cover the door." There was only one way in and out of the room.
I reached the terminal and started the download when I noticed it.
A little shimmer.
It seemed like a trick of the light, but I had seen it before. Covenant active camouflage.
I had probably less than half a second to react before a glowing red energy sword blade ignited and swung through the air where my head had been just before. Were it not for my MJOLNIR armor enhancing my reaction time, I probably would have been in two pieces.
The swing missed me but cut a deep diagonal gouge through the port data recorder, the system shorting out almost instantly. In that same moment the only door in or out of the room locked behind us.
I saw more shimmers out the corners of my eyes, but then I saw the elite, really saw him, for the first time as his camo dissipated. Sleek black armor with red power lights that matched the hue of his energy sword.
Silent Shadow.
Yeah, it was a trap.
