Nobility Lost
A Halo/Warhammer Fantasy Crossover
By: Gilles-Le-Briton
Introduction
Searing heat. Deafening gunfire. Piercing screams of the innocent. Guttural bellowing of Sangheili warriors. A once lush, shining example of humanity standing defiant against the great darkness of space, was burning. Planet Reach was aflame. The atmosphere was choked with plasma fumes from destroyed energy plants and chemical fires from once productive factories. Corpses of regiments of brave defenders laid in front of the civilian charges they attempted so valiantly to save, with a pitiful few of their aggressors' lifeless forms beyond telling the story of a hopeless endeavor.
Not all hope was extinguished yet, even in these dark portents. Noble Team, a six-man squad of genetically enhanced super-soldiers showed that even in its darkest hour, humanity still has steel enough to challenge the galaxy. Accounting for thousands of Covenant deaths, and the salvation of several evacuation craft, Noble Team was a rallying point that the besieged defenders desperately needed. However, even these skilled warriors could not staunch the crushing tide of Covenant without cost. As the last of Noble Team finds himself alone and outnumbered by the alien hordes, he is whisked away in the slip-stream backwash from the Pillar of Autumn to the grim darkness of a world, that knows only war.
Chapter 1: The Last Stand and the First Step
Jun-A266 watched as Six held off hundreds of seething Covenant virtually unaided, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth in frustration that he wasn't with his brother. As the Pillar of Autumn's slip-space drive began its final countdown to ignition, Jun bowed his head in mourning at all that was lost. Raising his head one last time at his brave comrade, he promised vengeance against these invaders, vengeance with fire and death. With a deafening whine, the engines of the Autumn blasted into life with a force beyond reckoning, and disappeared into slip-space as the world it was berthed was consumed by fire and war.
"Dodge left, suppression fire on Elite, stab Grunt in clavicle, shoot Elite in armor gap, finish off both combatants..." Six's entire body burned with the exertion of sustained combat. Heavily outnumbered, outgunned, and without support, by all rights any human should have died long before now. Though, this was no mere human these Alien filths faced. As Six performed a hyper-lethal dance few SPARTANs, let alone base-line humans could ever hope to achieve, his HUD had a small countdown in the corner of his visual overlay detailing how much longer until the Pillar of Autumn launched to safety. Pirouetting around yet another Elite's clumsy swing, Six switched his combat knife to the backhand and caught the foe in the sternum, utilizing the Zealot's overbearing weight against him as he slammed it into the ground, cleanly ripping the blade from the now lifeless adversary.
Suddenly, the ground shook as the Autumn's engines finally came to life, and Six stole a glance behind him to see his comrades finally leave the devastated planet. As he smiled grimly beneath the visage of the grim reaper on his Mark V helmet, his vision went white as a searing pain arced across his back. One of the Elites had not allowed the quaking of the Earth to distract it from its prey and brought a terrible blow with its Energy Sword across the unsuspecting SPARTANs back. Six fell onto his stomach, and allowed the countless hours of brutal ONI training to kick in, as his mind once again returned to the well-honed armament that encompassed his being. The Elite stepped forward with a tall, overhead strike, intent on ending the last defender of Reach in one, glorious stroke.
Six watched as if in slow-motion the sword came down with all of the finality of death itself, then juked quickly to the left as it struck the ground where he laid. Stopping mid bellow, the Elite suddenly lost sight of its opponent, then staggered as it found its throat gurgling with blood. Six withdrew his knife from the throat of his foe and fired the last of the rounds in his Magnum at each of the 5 Grunts that composed the remainder of the Covenant strike team, precise headshots laying low each alien. As the weapon clicked empty, he threw both the pistol and the battered combat knife aside, picked up the fallen Elite's Energy Sword, and looked at the hundreds more aliens sprinting towards him with death in their eyes. Consigning himself to this last stand, with his suit spraying bio foam onto his wounds, Six crouched into a combat stance, ready to die fighting. As the first Elite reached him, he heard the Pillar of Autumn's loud energy build-up as the Slip-Space Drive engaged, and the world erupted into madness.
One second, scores of Sangheili were baying for his blood, the next Six felt as if he was being compressed to an atomical state and saw what could only be the stuff of nightmares assail his mind. An amalgamation of insane colors and beings that could not possibly exist washed all around in a maelstrom of impossibility. Terrible visions of war and rage, an impossibly high throne bedecked in countless skulls, then flashing by at a speed uncomprehensible, a garden of untold lushness beset his senses. However, this was no botanical masterpiece as what used to be commonplace on the Ag-World Harvest. A nauseating smell of billions of rotting bodies mixed with the sweet but sour smell of an uncountable number of fungi that quickly sent Six's mind reeling further as the only sound he could hear was an old, grandfatherly laugh echo somehow throughout this realm and inside of his own head.
Then, right before Six could sense that this nightmare was about to claim him, a clash between three unfathomably powerful beings warred in front of his very eyes. What happened next, as Six found himself losing consciousness from this mental and physical assault, he could only describe as….spiritual. A golden beacon of light enveloped him as if in a golden cocoon, and spirited his body and very soul away from the denizens of the two hellscapes, and before he passed out, a powerful, yet warm voice echoed in his head with all the authority of fate itself, "My child, much more have you to do yet. Humanity has yet need of its heroes, even from across time and space. A realm beyond your understanding awaits, full of need and avarice. Your destiny awaits Spartan". As a cone of light narrows to a point, Six's last memory is of a green asteroid streaking across his vision with a flash of green light.
Screaming in both confusion and terror, Six's psycho conditioning kicked in and he focused on all the training he had been given to repulse fear. It was almost not enough. As fast as he had entered this hellscape, he was spat upon the ground like a worm from a gullet. Turning to his side, Six vomited the contents of his stomach. Fiendish visions and the dark laughter of terrible beings washed through his skull as his psyche struggled to understand what demonic dimension his body traveled through.
Faltering to his feet, Six shakily wiped the cold sweat from his brow and froze, realizing that the terrain he was on was not that of Reach. Acres upon acres of dark forest rose around him, covered in the heavy frost of early winter. As Six watched his breath condense in the cold air in front of him, he realized that his entire armor had changed. Gone was the masterpiece of Mjolnir that once coated his frame. In its place, was an equally wrought masterpiece of black plate armor, exquisitely wrought to mold his 6'9 frame. Stylized muscles were painstakingly etched into the chest piece, with a powerful chain mesh covered all the joints in the elbows and knees. A silver that seemed to glow from within created a stunning filigree that wined through the armor as a river does through a valley. On either side of the gorget, fierce wolves snaked upwards with snarling faces and eyes that glowed with the same soft silver. Yet, impossibly so, the armor was no more burden than a second skin. With a sense he could not explain, Six could even feel as if this armor gave him the same increases in strength and agility as its cybernetic ancestor. Looking around, Six found a helm laying in the snow a few paces away in the same dark plate as he wore, but wrought in such a way as to slightly resemble his former helmet. Six cautiously walked over to the tree, and slowly donned the helm. As soon as the helm was seated upon his head, a rush of energy pulsed through his entire body. The silver on his breast glowed aggressively, and a voice echoed a single word inside his head, "Altdorf". Six staggered with the force of the mental shout, and looked around rapidly for the source. Finding none, he shook his head and sat down beside the snowy pine, attempting to rationalize the situation. "I am no longer on Reach. I have suffered some kind of psychotic break. Both could be explained by being caught up in the slipstream wake of the Autumn. I am most likely on another colony world, yet to feel the Covenant's wrath. I must find the inhabitants and attempt to contact the UNSC. First, shelter so I don't freeze to death, rest, and be ready to move by dawn."
Finding sanity in simplifying his situation in an ordered, military manner, Six stood up calmy from the tree, and began moving to the supposed North through the forest, as he sited a small hill that would give excellent shelter and a good defensive position. As he took the first step, his greave brushed a metal object sticking out of the snow. Pulling it out by its handle, Six realized he was holding a medieval-style sword, however of strange craft. Pulling it from its white scabbard, also stylized with a wolf, the blade glowed with a radiant river of delicate line-work similar to his armor, except instead of silver, they were a deep sapphire blue. Six grasped that he was looking at a transformed version of his captured Energy Sword, however instead of an impressive scientific weapon, it was a masterpiece of balance and strength, a blade that could belong to the greatest warriors, that pulsed with a power that could only be described as magic. Six shook his head, dismissing the feeling as more signs of his broken psyche, and strapped the weapon to his waist and began his journey to the hilltop.
Reaching the base of the hill, Six raced up the hillside, trying to beat the dying twilight of the day and find shelter before nightfall. As he crested the hill, a grisly scene stopped him in his tracks and immediately he drew the glowing blade he dismissed so readily earlier and quickly scanned the area and treeline. A small campsite, with 3 tents, a wagon knocked on its side, its goods strewn across the clearing. A small firepit in the center of the tents had a light dusting of snow across it, long dead from disuse. 30 paces beyond the broken wagon, 7 bodies lay in haphazard order, limbs severed and thrown far from their origins, and pools of blood soaking the surrounding soil. Six ran over and checked if any were still alive. Futilely he checked each corpse, grimacing at the extent of the bodies' mutilation and obvious ritual cutting on every single soul, the most common being a prominent eight-pointed star, that when he glanced at them too long, it seemed a strange burning in the weapon in his hand began to get uncomfortably warm, as if the sword had a will to destroy this symbol. Six moved to the last corpse, and as he turned it over from being facedown in the snow, he flinched backwards and realized he has encountered something most definitely not human.
Gilles here. This used to be a story I started about 3 years ago during Covid. Much rewriting had to be done to get back out of the funk I was in. Hopefully readers from before will appreciate the new setting I am heading in, and will continue to give me constructive criticism as Noble-6 ventures into a dark new world of war, of insanity, and the bravery of a few souls that dare to offer something different. Welcome to Mallus, Six! Also, I know I robbed the tagline from 40k. Still an awesome slogan. Hope you enjoy, and may the Light of the Lady guide you.