Doug Walker - Head of Oni

I looked at the sample and the video.

"Yeah... Destroy the lab."

Halsey looked at me.

"What?"

"I'm just going to have this nuked from Orbit."

"This is a useful weapon. With this, we could destroy the Covenant."

"Biological weapons are not something you can control, Halsey."

"We have the vaccine for it and the enemy does not have it, the logical thing to do is seed their worlds with the virus."

"I've looked into the intel about Flood infections, Halsey. We cracked the enemy's languages, we have been in their systems. The Flood is not a toy. The Covenant glasses their own worlds when an infection gets bad enough."

"That just makes it a more effective weapon."

"Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."

"Explain why."

"I am sending you the classified files that we have gathered on the subject."

Her face was impassive.

"In lab conditions..."

"When the Flood gets to a certain size it becomes a hive mind. Right now the Covenant is divided, with a growing anti-war movement and growing rebellions we can arm. We are winning the war. If we unleash the Flood not only will it destroy any peace movement and destroy any chance of getting allies it will kill any chance of destroying their empire with a rebellion."

I paused.

"And on top of that, even if we do pull this off? We exchange an increasingly disunified enemy for a very unified hive mind, which by the way still wants to murder us. I'm not saying no because of morality, Halsey, I'm saying no because of pragmatism and practicality."

She looked at me taking it in.

"I will have the lab burned and destroyed."

"Thank you."

I carefully verified that the order was followed and watched as the lab was nuked a few times just to make sure. With that done I leaned back and looked through a data slate. There were some rebel groups looking for support in Covenant space, a few salvaged ships ending up in their hands along with weaponry could be very useful to us.

John 117

A simple boarding action, the enemy capital ship was getting closer past the interdiction fields and we wanted to take it out to prevent the world we were protecting from getting glassed. Our ship slid through the void and slowly went through their shields then we attached to the ship like a parasite I heard burning and our doors open.

A three-man team of Spartans, we walked out and saw a Grunt. He looked at us, hands empty, awaiting us.

"Human, you speak language?"

I didn't expect that, but I had been briefed on the language of the enemy, had learned it.

"Yes."

The creature nodded, then slowly put his hand on his pants. The others pointed their guns but I held my hand up, best to see what this creature wanted where this was going. He pulled out a... peace symbol?

"I'm with the movement, if you follow me I will take you to the computer room and we can get you to the command center without any trouble."

My partner looked at me.

"He wants to help."

"Why?"

I looked at the alien.

"Why are you helping us?"

"I hate my officers more than I could ever hate you, if they die we can turn this ship around and go home."

"He wants to go home, and apparently their officers are assholes."

We followed the creature into a nearby room and he brought up images.

"This is the vent system, it should take you right to the command center without having to fight through any guards."

I took photos of the map as he pulled out a ladder and unscrewed the vent.

"Oh, can you do me a favor?"

"What is it?"

"Don't kill any of my people while you're doing the deed. Please? None of us want to be here, we're all conscripts."

"Got it."

We got into the vents and my team followed me. I didn't know if it was a lie or a trap but I decided to trust my gut and then we found them, the enemy officers, in the exact place we had been shown. We threw grenades into the mass and then shot up them up. Then I heard the ringing of a bell and I got ready, was this a trap in the end? Grunts walked in and moved the bodies of the officers out of the way, one looked in our direction as they did so and he gave us a thumbs up.

We turned around and crawled back, and into our ship. The capital ship turned around and left, as did the rest of the fleet. We expected high casualties that day but we didn't lose a single person, a single human. That, more than anything, hammered home that we were winning.

Doctor Halsey

I looked up at the dim glow in the night sky.

"They kept their word."

Planetary shields. It cost us quite a bit of money but apparently the Front now feels comfortable enough to sell them to us, or thinks we're going to steal the tech inevitably one day.

"Yes, they did."

The delivery to Earth has already taken place, as it has to multiple worlds in the inner colonies. I looked at my commanding officer, head of ONI Doug walker.

Six ONI heads were executed before he got the job, all of them personally by the leader of our country, all of them for various fuck ups. Doug has decided that he wants to live. Anything that is stupidly shady in his mind gets scraped. Kidnapping children is a no-no, inducting orphans is ok. There is also a massive push to improve Spartan tech so older people can use it, with the idea that we can enhance adult volunteers. I asked him why once.

"We need to keep up with Project Athens and we need more troops now."

I looked at the sky.

"How long until the enemy hits Reach?"

"According to our models, you have a few months."

"No way to stop it?"

"They're heading in your direction, it's pretty much inevitable. You have been getting the more sensitive stuff out of there, right?"

"Of course. We are working on our backups right now. Still, this makes everything much harder for Project Spartan."

"Reach can be the headquarters but we can't keep all of our eggs in one basket. You prepared for a fight?"

"The hardest one in my life. You know, if we still had the samples..."

"No... Right now a reliable way to break the enemy is to simply shoot their officers, our casualties are plumetting and we are in talks with various rebel groups."

"Really?"

"How do you think we found out about this upcoming attack?"

We had spies amongst the enemy?

"Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"You're In Research and Development, not espionage, it was need-to-know information. Now you need to know so you know. ONI is an intelligence service, this is to be expected."

I thought about it.

"Understood. Fleet assets?"

"We fully intend to win, the rebel cells are currently aboard the mothership and are requesting aid to take the ship so they can take the fight to our common enemy."

I blinked.

"They're going through a revolution."

"The beginnings of it. The rebels want the enemy capital ship for their navy, if we can board it and help with the mutiny that ship becomes an allied ship. From there they plan on using records to freeze the fleet, the goal is to do a mass mutiny and they can't do it without our help."

"We can win this."

"Yes, we can. I will forward the information to you, don't fuck this up."

"Understood."