2114 Hours, May 13, 2535 (Military Calendar) /
Epsilon Eridani System, Orbital Defense Generator /
Facility A-331, planet Reach
John-117 loved Reach. It was as close to a home as he had ever known, really. It was where he was built, as much literally as figuratively. He felt at home in the sweeping forests and picturesque mountain ranges. He knew the layout of the Highland Mountain range like the back of his hand. Reach was his home.
Years had passed since the last time he set foot on Reach. He never imagined that a Covenant invasion would be the reason for his return.
Explosions shook the ground beneath him, sending sprays of loose dirt flying meters high. Bright plasma rounds burned through the air all around, lighting up the night sky. Ahead of him, half a dozen marines scrambled toward the open door of the last-standing fortified wall within what was formerly Facility A-331, a compound built for the express purpose of defending the generators used to power one of Reach's Orbital Defense Platforms.
They were only a few steps from the open door when a plasma round sailed over his shoulder and slammed into the back of one PFC Mahmoud. On instinct, John turned, dropped to a knee, and fired a short burst into the diminutive Grunt that had loosed the round. He quickly scanned to ensure that there were no more immediate threats before turning again.
He paused to collect the downed soldier before vaulting through the doorway and into what constituted 'safety' on a planet so perilously close to being burned to glass.
The moment John passed through the open space the Titanium-A doors slammed shut behind them with a firm thud. As solid as it sounded, he wished that the barrier gave him any feeling of security.
He beckoned to a slight corpsman named Torres. She slapped another marine on the shoulder and the pair took Mahmoud from his hands.
He tried to ignore the look in Torres' eyes as she scanned over the injured soldier.
As Torres awkwardly shuffled her new charge, the Chief took stock of the troops around him. There were six marines within the walls, seven counting Mahmoud, and all seen better days. At this point, each of them was running on nothing more than a sustained course of adrenaline and combat stims – hardly the crack fighting force one might have hoped for. But they were here, and they were alive, and that would have to do.
"Corporal Harland," John said to the ranking marine, "take Walker, Cochran, and Fincher to the rear of the facility. Keep your heads down – they're going to start probing for weaknesses."
Harland didn't even bother with the formality of a response, instead silently leading his fireteam away to do their job. The Master Chief wished they had met under different circumstances – the soldier had shown great leadership qualities and remained calm under duress. Those were the qualities that changed a soldier to a warrior.
Provided they lived long enough.
John turned to the other soldiers. "Torres," he said to the corpsman standing helplessly by the marine he carried through the door. A glance at his team's biometrics revealed that Mahmoud's vitals had flatlined.
"I want you on that radio," he continued after a split second's silence for the fallen marine, "if Spartan-087 is successful, we'll be back in communication with our boys upstairs any second. I want a squadron of Longswords firebombing anything outside this compound, understood?"
Torres nodded, but her eyes seemed distant. It wasn't until another bout of violent rumbling shook the soot from the reinforced walls that she snapped to and ran to the radio.
That left a 19-year-old by the name of Gersten. He was still holding Mahmoud in his arms, staring blankly at the ground.
John considered going to the young man's side. He could use some comfort, no doubt. But the Master Chief knew there was nothing he could do for Gersten. There was no comfort here – not when they were a matter of seconds from being overrun and ripped to pieces. Not when the Covenant had found Reach. Not when humanity was on the brink of losing everything.
So he did the best he could – he gave the marine a moment.
The Chief opened a private comm channel to his personal team. The soldiers he had been raised alongside, the ones he had fought with and for his entire life. The ones he might be leading to their deaths in a matter of moments. "Blue Team, how do we look out there?"
"Shiny as ever, Chief," Linda-058 answered, her words punctuated by the crack of her SRS99. She was stationed at the top of the three-story wall, directly above John's current position. The woman was a gifted sniper, and had already saved his life more than once over the past twenty-four hours. "At least one full battalion, advancing quickly. They've managed to get some armor past the minefield. We have a couple of minutes before the infantry at the door is the least of our concerns. And I'm down to two magazines. Any chance we're getting that airstrike soon?"
"That depends on Kelly," John's second in command, Frederic-104, responded. He was positioned a half-klick distant, waiting to provide cover for the last, unaccounted-for, member of their team. "I haven't seen a sign of her - well look at that," Fred said, "speak of the devil and she doth appear."
John chanced a look through a hole in the permacrete that a Grunt with a particularly good arm had opened with a plasma grenade. It took a few moments for him to spot, through the pitch dark and dust-choked landscape, what Fred had seen, but soon enough he recognized an armored figure burning its way toward them. The blinding speed at which she sprinted left no uncertainty that it was Kelly-087 returning from her assignment.
"Coming in hot," she panted, her voice strained, "Nasty tail."
Behind her, three of the beetle-like Covenant Ghosts materialized from the haze like their namesakes, the leader of the formation firing a few uncontrolled bursts after her. They weren't close enough to truly pose a danger to her at the moment, but they were quickly closing that distance.
"Don't worry, Rabbit," Fred answered, "I brought a little surprise for your friends."
Fred waited until Kelly was within two hundred meters of his position before stepping out into the open. In his hands was the last M247H Heavy Machine Gun, originally fixed on Facility A-331's outer wall. He turned the unwieldy weapon toward their teammate. The Ghosts were practically on top of her now, the lead driver boosting his ride in an attempt to run her down.
Fred pulled the trigger.
Almost immediately, the first Ghost erupted into a fireball. Its pilot was ejected by the sudden deceleration, the Elite sailing through the air until it collided face-first with a permacrete wall. Fred wheeled his mobile turret to the second Ghost in the formation, dozens of rounds tearing fist-sized holes through the pilot and sending the vehicle careening into its wingman.
Fred dropped the turret and turned to run as Kelly passed him.
Linda's rifle boomed overhead, decapitating the pilots of two more Ghosts as they emerged from the dust clouds behind the Spartan pair. Eruptions from plasma weaponry showered them, either smashing into their armor's shielding or throwing chips of shattered permacrete around them.
John keyed the activation for the doorway just in time for Kelly to dash through the small gap that opened, plasma rounds burning through the air around her. Dozens of plasma and needler rounds poured through the door in the half-second it took for Fred to barrel through the open space behind her, and John closed the doors once again. Loud thuds reverberated against the barrier as the furious aliens outside it continued firing after them.
Relieved as he was that they were still alive, it wasn't until Kelly tiredly raised her left hand in a thumbs-up that John was able to release the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
The hand gesture meant that her mission was a success – that the antenna at the far end of the compound was reconnected. A connected antenna meant that the Covenant outside were about to get firebombed into oblivion.
"Torres!" he shouted, "Comms are back up, get those Longswords down here now!"
No response. A quick glance revealed why – Torres was in a lifeless heap on the ground, large holes in her chest still smoking.
A brief silence passed over them all before Kelly said, "On it, Chief," and plucked the transponder from the fallen marine's hand. She removed her helmet and held the receiver to her ear and began transmitting.
John turned toward the rest of the company – what was left of it, at least. Only Blue Team, accompanied by the shell-shocked Gersten, still stood within this section of the compound. No more than a dozen other survivors continued to fight from hastily scratched foxholes outside the wall, more than a thousand Covenant soldiers bearing down on their heads.
"Everyone else, let's get up on that wall until our reinforcements arrive. We've still got work to do."
Three status lights burned green. Even after four days' uninterrupted fighting, the Spartans were ready to do their job. The newest addition to their team, however, was not.
"This is it, we're dead," Gersten muttered, dropping to the ground and ripping his helmet off his head. He began rocking back and forth, repeatedly mumbling, "It's over, it's over, we're dead."
Fred exchanged a glance with John before kneeling next to the young marine, placing a hand on his shoulder firmly enough to draw his attention. "Stow that talk, soldier," the Spartan said, removing his own helmet to look Gersten in the eyes. "This isn't over – not by a long shot – and we aren't going to die."
"Easy for you to say!" the marine shouted indignantly. "Spartans never die. That ain't the truth for the rest of us."
Fred's voice remained cool and confident, and he kept his hand in place on the young man's shoulder. "You know how I know we're not going to die?" he asked as though he hadn't heard the outburst. "It's because we're just too darn pretty." He flashed a grin and patted the back of his hand against Gersten's cheek. "Look at that chiseled jaw. There are way too many hearts out there left for you to break before you go."
Gersten still had that crazed look in his eyes, but at least he wasn't muttering anymore. The kid had some resilience in him yet.
"And you know how I know that this isn't over?" Fred pushed on without missing a beat. "Because in about 90 seconds, a dozen Longswords are going to scream over this valley like angels straight from Heaven, and they're going to drop fire on those animals out there."
He leaned back, gesturing with one arm at the facility around them. "Look at this place, we're defending the generator for an Orbital Defense Platform. As long as that ODP's still in the sky, there's no way we're out of this fight."
A low rumble reverberated through the air, quickly increasing in pitch and volume. Fred suddenly stood, a broad smile spreading across his face. "And if you don't want to take my word for it," he said to Gersten, pointing upward into the dark cloud cover, "then listen to that. It's our angels, already on their way."
John himself couldn't help but to breathe a sigh of relief. He and his team would gladly give their lives if it meant Reach didn't fall into Covenant hands. But that didn't mean that he was in any particular hurry to die.
The Master Chief handed an assault rifle to Gersten. "Fred's right," he said as the young marine closed his hand around the rifle's grip. "Those are our guardian angels. Let's get up on that wall and give them a warm welcome."
The marine nodded with some energy, life returning to his eyes. John couldn't help but feel the same. They were going to make it through the night, and then they were going to kick the Covenant off of Reach once and for all.
"They're not coming."
The words twisted like an icy hand around the base of John's spine. He turned toward Kelly, who was still holding the receiver to her ear.
"What do you mean 'they're not coming?'" Fred asked.
"I haven't been able to hail HIGHCOM – there's just a repeated order for a full retreat and evacuation of Reach."
Any warmth in John's body vanished. "But if those aren't our Longswords, then . . ." Without finishing his question, the Master Chief raced up the stairs to the top of the wall. Vaguely, he registered that Fred and Gersten were following behind him, but his eyes fixed on the quickly brightening cloud cover overhead.
He reached the top of the wall just before the clouds broke, revealing the source of the sound that only moments ago had been the hope for the defenders of Reach. The smooth, bulbous hull of a Covenant capital ship slowly burned its way toward the ground in a thunderous display of destructive power, immediately launching hundreds of dropships, Banshee fliers, and Seraph fightercraft.
The Covenant ground troops began firing on them again, but John didn't register the danger. From the corner of his eye, he saw several needler rounds strike Gersten's midsection with enough force to send him stumbling back toward the edge of the wall – then the glasslike shards exploded, rupturing the marine's ribcage and throwing him to the ground in a bloody mess.
Still, John couldn't tear his eyes from the awesome and terrible sight before him. Between the fleet defending the space outside Reach's atmosphere and the ODPs in strategic geosynchronous orbits around the planet, landing a craft that size could only mean one thing. It meant there was no more fleet. There were no more ODPs.
Reach was lost.
The UNSC was lost.
Everything was lost.
Author's Note: So, here is the first chapter in the Halo/Firefly crossover that not a single soul asked for. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have been enjoying writing it.