Kirk-018- Spartan

My augmentations almost killed me. They did cripple me but with the war on they devoted all of their assets to fixing us and, with the singular win we had being caused by the Spartan program, they put in the effort to fix the washouts. I was one of them, the people who got fixed up.

So it was my first mission, and it was a big one. This was, by the way, John's first mission.

All of the front's Carriers were mobile, and that's how they made all of their stuff. After Operation Warsaw we knew and understood they had some kind of Supercarrier. The UNSC was still technically at war with the Front, and we were getting more and more reports of this Project Athens. Thing is if we captured the Front's new Supercarrier, this Star Forge, that would be big. Really big because apparently that thing could make more Carriers, because that's where they made their supersoldiers with this Project Athens. We grab that and we wouldn't have to make any compromises with the Front. We would have all the cards and could force a united humanity, something that would have a better chance of winning the war.

It wasn't that we hated the Front, a lot of us respected how well they did, but their tech would be in much better hands if we had it. So we got a report that there was an opportunity but the security around the Star Forge was insane, the only way we could get in was to sneak in. Project Athens was doing a training opt on some world where we had a couple of spartans. If we could hijack one of their vehicles and get into the Star Forge then we could take it back to the UNSC.

That was the plan. Yes, it sounds wildly... optimistic, now. You have to understand we didn't have good intel on the Front back then and we had spent an entire year being blindsided by various bullshit. We got on planet, found them training, and went all out. Athenians couldn't match us in long-range.

Seriously. We have perception and reaction speed five times better than human baseline, Olympic level bodies, and some of the best fucking power armor out there. Our guns were better, and we just mowed them down. I mean, yes, their armor was good. But we were good enough to make neck shots each time, every time, and if you take a sniper shot to the neck you're just going to die. They did.

Over a hundred Athenians verse 30 spartans and it was a slaughter. Then we heard movement and then we saw this figure in power armor, the Athenians went to the ground and... she just moved. We lined up shots on her and we watched as she deflected anti-material fire with a sword.

I shit you not! She was deflecting dedicated sniper shots from 30 different people all at once with a sword. While rushing us! It was then I noticed that John was gone, I thought he had run off. I was pissed and ordered the others to fight. That was a mistake. We switched to rocket launchers because, seriously, fuck this. Crazy bitch jumped on our rockets and used them as stepping stones to get closer to us! And then, as she was right in the fucking middle of our sniper patch, she turns off her sword and simply states:

"You have all been bad, I will now discipline you."

What followed next was one of the worst ass-kickings I had ever had. We tried shooting at her, to no avail, and she decided to just kill us with her bare hands. She did that, I watched her rip a man's head off. She physically picked one Spartan up and used him to beat another Spartan to death. The only reason I survived was my decision to go to ground and play dead. After that I remained still until she left, then I remained still with the bodies of my comrades until it got dark. Then I saw light and saw John.

John had managed to steal one of their new fighters, the Abba.

"Anyone else?"

"No."

The two of us gathered up our dead and took them to the transport, we also took the fighter john had. That fighter was what let us finally crack the secrets of how forcefields worked. The first ones were shit but by the time the Covenant came back for round two our ships had shields. We still got blooded, but now we had a fighting chance. So the mission was called a success and John got all the credit.

As for me, I still have nightmares. Nightmares about that woman, that Samus of theirs.

Corinthia Hansen - ONI

Operation Warsaw was both a godsend and a disaster for the UNSC.

On the good side, it was the single biggest victory mankind had during the war. The entire in-theater Covenant fleet was caught in a trap and utterly obliterated. I don't know how they pulled that off but an incredibly numerically inferior force just destroyed the Covenant fleet and we gained a year of peace a year to restock, refuel, and rebuild.

The downside was that the Front was the one who won that victory.

To their credit they did turn in the information they had gathered on the Covenant, after Warsaw. We learned where the enemy was, learned about their culture, learned their language. The problem was that...

The inner colonies were composed of 210 worlds. Sorry, have to be more exact: 210 star systems. This was the industrial heartland of the UNSC. The outer colonies had more than 10,000 systems. Now each system the outer colonies had was far less populated and industrialized but, if they all went to the Front, it would only be a matter of time until they outnumbered us and had more industry, just from being able to settle space in mass.

The UNSC's civilian leadership was split and couldn't make up their minds.

The doves said we should cut a deal with the Front and make them into an allied nation. From that point of view the sooner we acted and the more of the outer colonies we could keep in the peace deal.

The Hawks said that now, with the alien threat nullified, we should reconquer the Front territory and force them to hand over their technology.

And most people dithered, deciding to put things off as much as possible. To be fair we had spent the first year of the war being hit with one outside context problem after another. So how did ONI spend the pause?

Trying to take as much tech as possible. We tried to steal secrets from the Front, we sent scavenger teams to battle sites and tried to gather alien tech. Under the table deals with the Front were secured where political prisoners would be released and, in exchange, we would get X amount of time to scavenge what we could in peace.

We tried to seize their Carriers a few times but failed every single time. The UNSC caught us after the third failed attempt and told us we had to stop. Because the diplomats were at work, on both sides. More worlds declared for the Front during the pause, the biggest loss was the Tata systems.

Tata was one of the biggest companies in the outer colonies and also the single worst company in the outer colonies, they owned 25 star systems outright. And then the Front went over everyone's heads and said that the company wasn't going to get help from the UNSC. There was a massive rebellion, the CEO of the company was taken in and actually given a fair trial.

The evidence was damning. Tata used company script, they used debt slavery. Their security officers would rape and murder people to secure compliance, and the idiots would tape all of this shit. So, of course, news of the trials just got back to the inner colonies and made the political situation worse.

Still, we did have some victories. Between our intelligence gathering, and the scavenging and reverse engineering, we were able to create primitive forcefields for our ships. We were also able to make some other minor improvements to our fleet and we were able to rebuild our stock of nuclear weapons. But the pause did not last and, while we built up our fleet, the Front built up theirs.

When the Covenant came back there was the knowledge that this wasn't over, that we couldn't put this off forever, and so the UNSC did the unthinkable: we started peace talks with the Front.

Sometimes the hardest thing a nation can do is make peace.