War was hell.
Everyone who had to endure it would attest to it without objection.
When Covenants attacked humanity,
When remnants of it persisted with discovery of Forerunner AIs,
When UNSC's very own smart AIs started to rebel against their creators,
When the Banished managed to shred the UNSC to small pieces.
Thanks to Cole Protocol, and ONI's attempt to 'sanitize' data within the Created-occupied locations, Earth had but a few scratches from the fight from space.
Compared to other planets terraformed and colonised by the UNSC and their Megacorp Subsidiaries, which had been glassed by the Covenants and made near-uninhabitable, Earth so far had only lost a few cities and people.
UNSC, on the other hand, got the short end of the stick. Took the full brunt of the several attacks.
Guardians paralysing the Military Government and the Megacorps created under them, and the Banished butchering them up.
If they had one good thing, it was that ONI went down with them.
That was one less pain in the ass in the universe. And at least they did their part to help humanity before they were getting shreded to pieces.
But that still wasnt enough. After taking liver blows from their own Smart AIs, the banished were slowly snuffing the flames out.
If they wanted to survive, if they wanted to stop the Banished from reaching Earth,
They had to take Master Chief's lead.
They needed to group together and rebuild.
UNSC Revenant was but a few of the surviving pockets of UNSC and UNSC-related bodies.
It was perhaps one of the biggest surviving pockets, spending previous years picking up any distress signals to rescue several officials and militaries, assimilating them into their ranks.
Damages and sacrifices were slowly replaced by whatever they could salvage. This included destroyed parts of other UNSC vehicles and Carriers, decomissioned Civilians ships, and even abandonned Covenant carriers.
Hell, if they had the time they would even scavenge and salvage Forerunner technology to add to their arsenal.
UNSC Revenant was slowly living up to its name, a dying ship forefully resurrected to life through any means. What was originally an Epoch-class heavy carrier now had so many crafts of varying origins grafted on to every direction, it now grew to the size of an Infinity-class supercarrier.
They got more people and Vehicles and weapons. They needed the space.
The only problem to the people on board of UNSC Revenant was that their ship basically became a walking UNSC protocol violation, none of them really cared. UNSC was falling apart, and majority of those Protocols were made and preserved out of Paranoia anyway.
"… We're actually insane for trying this."
"Don't Worry. It's going to work."
Spartan Commander Washington turned away from the screen to look at Captain Church.
Even with the Steel and Red JFO helmet hiding his face, Captain Church could feel the utter dissapointment exuding out from behind it.
"Like hell it is. You're asking us to basically push on the legal boundaries of the Cole Protocol."
"Do you have any better ideas?"
"Use another planet. I know that our ship found a Colony planet designated as UNSC associated much closer to us right now."
"And as I have told you and every other crew within this ship, there is too much of a risk factor there to attempt that."
"It's an even bigger risk factor to bring, oh I don't know… a hodgepodge of Covenant, Banished and Forerunner technology to EARTH."
"Cole Protocol stated not to introduce captured covenant craft to human controlled space without an exhaustive search for tracking systems that could lead the Covenant to Human bases. And as far as I know, we spent every hour while incorporating salvaged material scanning to see if any of them could backfire on us."
"And my common sense is stating that our salvaged tech could backfire on us any time. It's a dynamite- one that just waiting for someone to light the fuse we have cut down to a single milimeter from the explosive."
"Agent Washington, at this point in time Earth has already been compromised. After being subjugated by the Created, and being threatened by the Banished, it's already even more at stake of a another alien invasion. And this time, the opposing force isn't coming to reclaim some Forerunner legacy or trying uphold the mantle of responsibility.
It's coming for Revenge."
Captain Church already briefed UNSC Revenant, and clearly expressed his opinion on why this was the best possible solution.
Despite the risk existing by taking a Chimera of a ship, his words held true.
An Eye for an Eye.
Tooth for a Tooth.
Home planet for Home planet.
And despite the efforts of UNSC and ONI, the Banished were just mere footsteps away from rediscovering the Coordinates to Earth.
The best they could do was to properly come in contact with Earth after 40 years (not counting the Covenant Contact during the near end of the war) and act as the last resort in its defence.
The plan was simple: land on Earth, establish a base in one of the areas, and act as the newest main base for the reviving UNSC.
Hide, Shelter, Regroup, and then Strike back.
"Sir, we've got news for you."
"What is it?"
"It's… well. It's a Spartan, sir. You may want to check this out directly."
And also get anything they can salvage or recruit along the way.
Agent Washington received a communication link from the Crewmates down at the scrap sorting cargo hold, made by attaching salvaged and modified regions of a destroyed Banished dreadnought.
The Spartans on board of UNSC Revenant made sure that the Banished Ship didn't miss their lost parts.
It was now used by the UNSC Revenant to pick up anything they can find and use while traveling through space.
Agent Washington made his leave from the bridge, and promptly traveled down using built in gravity elevators.
These things were disorientating for the first few weeks, and now it made the analogue method of travelling down feel so much slower.
Washington was met with a large cryo chamber, a large Spartan with a cracked helmet visor presented within.
"Holy shit on a stick. Where did you find him?"
"We found him drifting away from a destroyed UNSC carrier ship, sir. We managed to extract him along with salvageable scraps."
A Spartan wearing a GEN2 ENGINEER-class Mjolnir stepped up to answer.
"… Any other survivors?"
"None that we could confirm and rescue at the moment."
"God bless their souls."
Agent Washington watched as the mechanics started up plasma blow torches.
"The cryo chamber's been welded shut, several blasts from plasma weaponry by the looks of it. It wasn't intentional, the amount of blasts this thing took tells me that they wanted to melt the guy completely, and this was the best they could do in the moment. I know the Banished didn't like Spartans, but sheesh… Whoever he is, the banished were hellbent on killing him in his sleep. Would rather take him out without a fight."
Agent Washington watched closely as the workers were halfway through cutting the cryo chamber's lid off.
The half-melted glass made the rest of his armor hard to distinguish, but the slowly dying display monitor on the bottom printed out everything Washington wanted to know.
SPARTAN-B312
"Jesus fucking christ. It's Noble 6."
"Excuse me?"
"It's Noble 6. No wonder they wanted to avoid a fight with this Spartan. Spartan-B312, that was his code."
"… You mean the Ghost of Reach?"
"Not the nickname I'd say in his face. Mind you, he hates that moniker."
Agent Washington stared at the Spartan UNSC Revenant had rescued.
Why wouldn't he? Everything that happened for him to get that nickname was just tragedy after tragedy.
Noble 6 wasn't the type to feel proud about having to watch as everyone around him sacrifice themselves, and yet remain as the sole survivor.
"Take him to the med bay once you pull him out of that makeshift coffin. And notify me once he wakes up."
"Roger that."
Agent Washington stared at the blue flames for a few more moments, before taking a step back to the bridge.
UNSC Revenant would be one of, if not the most, chaotic UNSC crew out there.
From the constantly clashing views between crewmates of different origins, to the very plan they all decide to agree on.
Now they had a Hyper lethal vector of a spartan newly on board.
And the Captain was going to take him with them on their journey to Earth.
The entire ship was of clashing colours and design too.
Both the Exterior and the Interior.
But somehow, through sheer force of ingenuity, luck, and will - it all held together fine.
Actually, it was more than fine. Shit, this ship was thriving. Nearly outperforming every other possible fleet from all factions.
The engineers on this ship would call this a rewarding result of their hard work and cooperation.
As they saw it, this was natural because of their effort into researching, reverse engineering, and incorporating salvaged technologies.
Agent Washington saw it as a goddamn miracle.
A goddamn miracle the crew was already pushing the limits of.
Agent Washington sighed as he moved.
He was already questioning his life choices, until realising this would have been the best possible outcome for him.
War was hell.
Everyone who had to endure it would attest to it without objection.
And that's why the Spartans survived and thrived in it.
There was a reason why Spartans were called Demons.