Halo: Twisted Mirror

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==Chapter 1==
Gilberto ‘Gil’ Vargas could think of some three hundred better places to be than the landing pad he stood at the ready on now. High in the Noctus skyline, one almost could forget Andesia had been a hotbed of insurrectionist activity as recently as two years ago, the prosperous city sprawled out around them gave the colony a presentable facade, one HIGHCOM had deemed to be suitable enough to host this meeting.
The Spartan had plenty of thoughts about the meeting too, about why Fireteam Anchor needed to be the assigned security detail for the UEG reps meeting with Feru ‘Sihar and the rest of his delegation from the elite warlord’s faction, simply called the State of Sihar. Three planets fell under the Elite’s rule, though only one of them, Carnaca, was of any real concern. Carnaca was a human colony, or had been before ‘Sihar himself had glassed it in 2548, and needless to say, those who’d survived the war and returned to resettle their home hadn’t taken kindly to his domain.
Bloodshed was threatening to boil over into a larger conflict, one that might bring more men and material to ‘Sihar’s banners, and stretch the UNSC even thinner with yet another conflict of this variety. They had no shame, the Elites, the sites of their atrocities were now their spoils, regardless of the circumstances they’d claimed them. They didn’t comprehend the insult, and though Vargas and Spartan Hadrian Colombo had been more than willing to aid in helping the warlord to understanding, that wasn’t the mission they’d been given.  
The five Spartans of their fireteam stood at either side of the human delegation, headed up by the UEG’s Head of Interspecies Affairs, Margarey Holt. She wasn’t a soldier, but she’d still suffered through the war like one, part of some hospital corps that went to besieged colonies to try and provide aid. It hadn’t lasted long, being dissolved in 2551 after the casualty rate all but wiped out the philanthropic endeavor, but it made her more palatable than some desk jockey who’d never seen a grunt until Earth. Still, her optimism in regards to Human-Sangheili relations was insufferable.
Colombo was to Gil’s right, and to his left stood Jasper Chuol. The former was Gil’s closest friend and Anchor’s resident sharpshooter, after the team’s misfortune on Requiem only Colombo and he had been left standing for the rest of the conflict, which had given them plenty of time to bond. The latter had arguably gotten off the second worst on the shield world, with only Spartan Hastings Baker, who’d died, coming ahead of him. With half his limbs now as much a machine, he only further fit the role as Anchor’s strong, silent type, and pointman. Gil couldn’t quite call Chuol a friend simply because the man never talked, but he liked to think every once in a while the cyborg thought fondly of him.
On the other side of the politician was Iliana Samaras, their leader, and Elias Gael, the replacement. Iliana, to her credit, was a commendable leader, fearsome warrior, and a dear friend, all of which was to say she wasn’t half bad for being ex-Army. Elias was something of an unknown quantity, though one Vargas found hard to dislike, Baker’s replacement had been in the same class as the rest of Anchor on Laconia Station, and the fact he too had been a Helljumper did plenty to put him in Gil’s good graces. He also was the only other member of the team who sported first generation MJOLNIR with the GEN2 upgrade package rather than the variety of new generation suits the rest of the team wore. They’d never talked about it, but Gil thought their reasonings might’ve been similar. He’d ask one day, just not now.
His gaze turned skyward, towards the bulbous dropship that pierced the midday clouds as it descended from orbit. Some groups didn’t bother with updated livery, particularly those headed by Brutes or Kig-Yar and Ta’voan, but ever Elite warlord had seemingly decided on their own personal color scheme for their forces, within reason. After all, changing the plating on a Banshee was a far cheaper endeavor than for a Cruiser. ‘Sihar was one such warlord who could bear the expense, and thus everything including the Phantom now pulling in to land sported electric blue in the place of the Covenant’s shade of purple. 
It looked nice admittedly, but that didn’t change Gil’s opinion on former members of the Covenant declaring rule over the same colonies they’d butchered.
As the dropship came to a halt, a compliment of warriors descended from the hull, three Sangheili, and four particularly large Unngoy. After them came three more elites, each of whom’s ID flashed across his HUD. The particularly large one sporting the combat harness of an Elite Major was Ronar ‘the Blue Skellin’, Feru’s eldest son, a bastard, and accomplished warrior and Banshee pilot. Meanwhile the smallest of the three was Rtar ‘Sihar’s trueborn heir, who had been too young to fight in the war, and seemed to have a chip on his shoulder as a result. Between them both, still sporting the harness of a shipmaster was Feru himself, whose dossier had led Gil to expect a much larger warrior compared to the relatively average Feru. He supposed being massive wasn’t all that crucial on the bridge of a battleship, nor when it still made you a full foot taller than even the largest of the majority of your opponents. 
The entourage formed around Feru’s flanks as he marched towards them and came to a halt in front of Holt.
“Kadion, a pleasure to have you.” She greeted.
“Lady Holt, an honor to meet you face to face.” 
“Margarey is fine, humanity is a bit past those titles these days.” Her response was quick, and the firmness in her voice gave Gil some confidence she wasn’t going to simply roll over to the Elite’s demands. That was the first time he’d felt halfway decent about the whole thing since he’d been briefed. Still, he shot a glance over to Colombo, who could not fight back a simple shrug.
“These demons are smaller than the older ones, perhaps such a fate is shared by our peoples.” Ronar mused.
“Size does not always belay capability.” Grumbled his trueborn brother, in a low snarl.
“Your swordplay says otherwise, little brother.” Chuckled the towering warrior.
“Both of you, mind your tongues. Forgive my sons lack of decorum, the realities of statehood are lost on them.” Hissed Feru, both of his sons finding their manners whilst the Spartans maintained their silence. Gil hadn’t taken offense to the first remark, but the casual interaction between father and sons gave him pause. It was too human, too true to his own memories.
The sooner this was over, the better.
----
“I don’t understand it demon, why are we even here? My father is the best hope that backwater has.” Rtar’ Sihar demanded as they rode through the streets of Noctus in the back of the converted Razorback. Since they’d hit the streets, Gil had watched the young Elite’s demeanor change from an innocent amazement with the city, to bitter cynicism after his half-brother had called out the behavior.
The indignant remarks were just a front, and that made it all the more annoying.
Gil looked over to Colombo, the red of his own visor locking gazes with the blue dome of his friend’s own helmet. The latter shook his head, and Gil just let out a quiet scoff under his helmet.
“I know you can hear me, your kind hear twice as well than normal humans. Are you truly just machines? Jefferso- my friend, on Carnaca, he says you Spartans are just machines.” The mask was slipping, the young Elite could not help himself. If he was quiet his brother would not notice his curiosity from the transport in front of them and mock him, and neither would his father chastise him for bothering the Spartans from behind.
“Still flesh and blood as the day I was born.” Colombo sighed, caving first.
“So you do speak.” Rtar’s mandibles moved in a vain attempt to replicate a smile.
“Only when you don’t ask stupid questions.” Gil jumped in, leaning back against his seat while keeping a steady hand on his assault rifle, smirking as the youth’s poor mimcry of a smile faded in frustration. It seemed Sangheili and Humans weren’t so different at 16, all one had to do was push the right buttons and they crumbled.
“It wasn’t a stupid question.” He protested.
“Yeah it was.” Gil chided, looking out onto the streets and giving a nod to the local police working the roadblock that the delegation was now passing through. Their teasing of the heir to House ‘Sihar wouldn’t last much longer now, with the road ahead clear they’d be at the site of their conference in no time, which meant they’d have to get their licks in now.
“It was not, my fath-”
“Is trying to take what little he hasn’t already from those colonists by making them his thralls.” Colombo cut off the sentence at the knees.
“What? Thralls? No, they are our-”
“Your what, vassals? Serfs? Not a lot better. Subigation sure is a strange way to apologize for murdering billions.” Gil chuckled scorfully. They should’ve kept their mouths shut, going at the kid was unprofessional, but he’d been on it for the last fifteen minutes, and they’d smooth it over by the end, but not before leaving the right thoughts in his head.
“No!” Rtar’s voice raised, and both Gil and Colombo turned their heads fully towards him. “They are our people. We can protect them, better than you can.”
Gil scoffed and tilted his head, as if to dare the boy to continue, and to his credit the Elite did not balk.
“Laugh as you like demon, when my father first came to Carnaca your UNSC left little more than a few gunboats to defend it, and now that the refugees return you send nothing at all. How long would it take your fleets to arrive if the Banished or some other Jiralhanae warband showed up? How many of your people would be left by the time you deigned to come?” The young elite rose in his seat, calling the attention of most of the convoy to him, and Gil for the briefest moment, without a response.
“Both of you, lock it up, now.” Iliana cut in over the COM.
“Rtar, hold your tongue.” Feru ‘Sihar called from behind them, loud enough for both his sons to hear, Gil didn’t need to know Sangheili expressions to know he was angry. He looked away and out to the road, at the winding streets, and strange wires across the asphalt. His stomach dropped.
“Hold the convoy-!” The first detonation cut him off, Colombo threw Rtar to the floor and dove over him, the second detonation rocked their Razorback and threw it on its side, and as stars filled his vision he only heard the detonations that followed.
Gil’s shook his head to clear his vision, trying to get a bearing on his immediate surroundings. His HUD blared alarms as his shields struggled to recharge, and he looked about the passenger area and saw carnage. The driver was dead, as were the two Unngoy that’d rode with them in complete silence, and Colombo had been thrown from the vehicle. 
Gil looked to where he’d thrown down the ‘Sihar heir, and mercifully found Rtar not only alive but moving, struggling to pull a plasma rifle from the deathgrip from one of the Grunts. Gil returned his gaze to his teammate, and the lengths of rebar that’d gone through the exposed areas of his armor. The techsuit had stopped most, but not all. His TEAMBIO was a ominous shade of orange, though that was better than the daming red that showed next to Chuol’s tag. They’d taken another casualty, here of all places.
“Stay down!” Gil commanded Rtar as he pulled himself out of the wreckage, and brough his MA5D to bear, sweeping the upper floors of the buildings opposite them. He found his first contact in the blink of an eye, a human male in simple combat armor, leveling a Confetti Maker with the stalled convoy.
“Hostiles in the windows!” Iliana beat him to the punch, and her DMR cracked an instant prior to his rifle, punching holes into the shooter before he could make his play. But as the first dropped, bullets hammered his back, thudding against the heavy plating of his MJOLNIR, Gil spun and shot down his attacker, but not before the spray of led found new prey on the ground.
In an instant Colombo flatlined as the shooter raked the injured Spartan with gunfire. His best friend was gone, and all because he’d been a fraction of a second too slow. But he couldn’t feel it, not right now, Gil remembered his training, and stuck to the mission. He shuffled back to Rtar, scanning back and forth, the boy was still desperately prying the massive fingers from the Plasma Rifle, trying to fight back.
“Spartan, my father, my brother, your frien-” He could hear the concern rising, Rtar was afraid, not for himself, but for those he loved, and those he perceived Gil too. The Spartan looked first to Ronar, and found the hulking Elite blasting away at the attackers as Gael pulled the driver of their Razorback into cover. In an instant his gaze went back towards Feru’s Razorback, the one Chuol had been aboard, and found a much different sight.
More of the attackers, these ones heavily armed and armored, pulling something away.
“Shit.” Gil rose back up to fire, dropping two in quick succession before the others reacted with trained precision, falling into firing positions and pouring it onto him. The Spartan dropped back, rounds slamming against plating as his shields dared to try and regenerate, only to be shattered again.
“Contacts trying to abduct ‘Sihar, need support, now!” Gil snarled into the COM, green acknowledgement lights winking in response as he felt something move off his thigh, Rtar had given up on the Plasma Rifle, and procured Gil’s M6D. From the way he handled it, Gil knew it wasn’t the first time he’d navigated an M6, and when his first two shots dropped an ODST armor-clad attacker, Gil knew he might’ve been too quick to write the kid off as being as incapable as he was entitled. 
It didn’t matter, Gil snatched the edge of his combat harness, and pulled the heir back into cover as the attackers filled the air with lead. “We have to stop them, they’re taking him! Ronar they have father, Ronar we have to-!”
“Shut up, keep your head on a swivel, we’ll get your old man. Watch our ass.” Gil hissed, the young Sangheili nodding wearily as the Spartan sighed. Gil moved to emerge from cover only to drop back as heavy machinegun fire perforated the smoking Razorback. The time they had to rescue Feru was dwindling fast, and only getting faster, if one of his team didn’t spring him soon they’d lose their only hope of averting failure.
It was Gael who stepped in first, rising from cover the blue-armored warrior, brought up his Battle Rifle squuezing off one burst, two, three, each volley silencing another gun. Rounds hit his shields, painting the Spartan in a golden shimmer, but he was unphased. The rifle barked again and again, then went dry, ducking into cover as Gil’s own shields finally sprung back to life.
Now he spun out from cover after slamming in a fresh magazine, and opening up into a woman clad in black ODST armor and letting off quick bursts with an MA5C. Some of the attackers had lesser quality weapons and armor, but even then there was still uniformity, and even their least equipped grunt was sporting kit that most frontier types could only dream of. Gil dropped the woman with a tight burst into an unarmored area, but he could only make that kind of shot reliably thanks to his enhanced reflexes, these bastards would chew through any sort of Colonial SWAT teams like wet tissue.
They were well trained, well armed, and an enigma. In other words, they were exceedingly dangerous. 
Gil shot down another, and Iliana bolted past him, shouting over their TEAMCOM, “Gael, secure the runt and Holt, Gil on me!”
He hadn’t lived this long by questioning her, and surged after her, watching as she fired her DMR to the side, killing one of the attackers without even turning her head towards him. It was impressive, but it was born of anger, even in the mad rush past the empty Razorback that’d held Feru ‘Sihar, both of them couldn’t help but look at Jasper Chuol’s still corpse. He’d never been particularly animated, but there’d been a kindness to him that he shared only in fleeting moments.
That was gone forever, just like Colombo.
Gil stayed hot on Iliana’s heels, crossing the threshold of the building the terrorists had fled into only a step behind her, but a step to slow nevertheless. The world exploded, again, and this time the additional plating of the older MJOLNIR still saved his life, but it did not spare him any pain. Cement and metal buried Gil in an instant, and pain rocked his body as several tons of the building collapsed onto him.
Alarms blared, vital sign warnings screamed, his HUD sparked and died, then for a moment he was still, his ears ringing. Then, the Heads Up Display rebooted, and shoved him from the momentary darkness back into the world. His upper torso and one arm were free from the pile, able to look into the seemingly abandoned office building, blood leaking from a wound over his eyes and obfuscating his vision, but he could make out enough.
“-berto! Gilberto Vargas you answer me goddamnit!” Iliana screamed over the COM, punctuating her demand with shots from her rifle into some of the mysterious attackers who’d taken up defensive positions to try and hold her off. It wouldn’t work, they only still had the position because she was trying to be sure he wasn’t dead.
“I’m fine, go get the bastards.” He groaned through another wave of pain, she didn’t answer him verbally, but he watched her form sweep out of cover and drop the two defenders in quick succession, and that was acknowledgement enough. They were screwed now, Iliana was one of the top performers in the Spartan-IVs, regardless of who these attackers were, no matter how good their training, they weren’t going to be able to match her.
Gil smirked as she raced across the open floor, sure of their triumph. His confidence died as quickly as it had been reborn when a figure seemingly stepped from nowhere, behind Iliana as she moved. Active Camouflage? 
“Boss on your six-” Too late, the figure blasted once with a shotgun, shattering Iliana’s shields before she could react. She slammed to a stop, turned on a dime, and still she was to slow. The shotgun roared, and blood and viscera exploded above her left knee. She fell with a scream of shocked agony, and the figure mercilessly kicked her onto her back, and fired again without pause. She went still, and her vitals went flat.
“NO!” Gilberto screamed, scratching at cheap carpet as he fought to free himself from under the rubble, so that he might tear the stranger apart. They were gone, they were all gone. Requiem, a dozen different deployments, the damned Great War, they’d survived it all for what? To be killed by some sick bastards on a UNSC colony in some attack? It was absurd, it was insulting, Gil screamed again.
It threw a glance back at him, her blood sprayed across its armor, and faded away. Out of the corner of his eye though, he saw a new threat, on the opposite side of the building, he saw the immistakble outline of a Hellbringer, complete with massive fuel tank on their back, hurtling cylindrical objects into the building, and Gil lost his composure even further, they were going to burn him.
Flames shot out, and spread at terrifying speeds, racing over the floor towards him, consuming Iliana’s lifeless form in mere seconds. Gil didn’t want to die, not like this, he hadn’t even noticed the lessening pressure, not until two sets of hands, one human, and one not, pulled him back out by his feet, just as the blaze was about to reach his fingertips.
Gael and Ronar were both yelling at him, trying to get him to tell them something, but Gil either couldn’t hear them, or his mind refused to allow him too. That, or the blood loss was more severe than he’d thought. Darkness crept over his vision, and he realized it was in fact, much more severe, he fell into the dark sleep and wondered if it would even be worth it to wake up.
----
Feru ‘Sihar was a warrior of the highest caliber, an accomplished Shipmaster, a great leader, and now, humiliated as a prisoner. They should not have been here, the Devils in the Darkness, who’s shadows he watched from inside the crude sack they’d thrown over his head. His rivals were a plague on Carnaca, but never so bold, not unless the Devils were with them. Now, here on a world where they should’ve stood no chance at being on, Devils were all there was.
No misguided farmers, rightfully angry at Feru for his wartime transgressions, was to be found here. Only the Devils. Merciless slayers of women and children, of Sangheili and human alike. They used words like ‘collaborator’ to excuse their kinslaying, and clung to a deep hatred that would’ve rather seen the galaxy burn than ever accept peace. He was not so devoid of empathy that he did not understand their wrath, but his people’s actions did not excuse their own.
They would kill him here, like they’d killed his brother, Garal, a year prior, and like Garal they would make a show of it. Feru did not curse his fate, nor whimper in fear, he would give them no such satisfaction.
He did not know where he was, nor how long it had been, only that he had been taken.
A hand grabbed the bag over his head and wrenched it free. Light stung his eyes, Feru blinked rapidly, looking about the simple room he was in. They’d forced him onto his knees, so that they might look down on him, delude themselves into thinking they were more than cowardly murderers. The Devils stood in silence, most where the dark armor of Imps, some in other attire he atributed to human special forces, though the largest of them looked down on him from behind the mirrored dome of a helmet, a black Sangheili skull emblazoned on her visor. 
A Flame Imp, the maddest of the mad, he’d seen them plunge into direct combat with raging Jiralhanae packs, stepping into infernos of their own making. Some humans would retreat when enough died, sometimes to lure one into a trap, other times simply because they did not want to die, but not those madmen, never them.
It was impossible to tell if it was man or woman under all the heavy armor, but in spite of it being the most visually distinct human in the room, Feru doubted it was the leader. All eyes turned to something behind him. Feru tried to turn his head, but a hand effortlessly held his sight forward. No human should’ve been able to do that. He looked before him and saw it, the holorecorder aimed squarely at him, and let out a chuckle.
“So, you mean to make another one of your broadcasts, this time with me as your entertainment.” The warrior sighed, struggling pointlessly against his bonds. 
“Not entertainment, education.” The voice from behind him answered, definitively male, young, perhaps too young to be leading such a group like this. Human, Elite, most any creatures respected the experience and knowledge that came with age, even Brutes did, so long as their elders could prove their strength. So what made this one so special.
He got his answer, when the grip left his head, and his captor stepped forward. The armor was battered, some components replaced or modified with elements from entirely different sets. Pouches of ammunition, explosives, and numerous blades hung from the carapace, and stored just under the breastplate of an Imp was an Energy Sword, no doubt stolen. One gauntlet house shotgun shells, the other sported an integrated Jackal Shield projector, but it was the core of the armor, the helmet with its orange visor, emblazoned with the teeth of a predator, that told him all he needed to know.
“Demon.” Feru muttered, more confused than anything. He thought the humans had a handle on their greatest weapons, yet with every passing day there seemed to be more exceptions to that rule. ‘Mdama’s pet, The Renegade, Ilsa Zane, and now this…thing.
“One among many.” It answered coyly, with a shrug.
“Among fewer now, kinslayer.” He hissed, remembering the limp corpse of the Spartan called Jasper, the human had been seemingly half metal, but the way he had spoken to Feru had convinced him that the man had been more heart than anything.
“I don’t weep for traitors, do you?” It challenged, squatting down so that its visor was level with his eyes.
“They were not the traitors demon, you on the other hand,”
“I didn’t forget what your kind did, what you did, Feru ‘Siharmee.” Feru growled at the use of the dead honorific, a stain of his past, of the Prophets lies, and of his butchery on behalf of them. He’d been trying to make it right, could they not see?
“My sins are great, but I-”
“But nothing. Go on, say what you want hinge-head, just spare us all the moaning about how you were lied to, about how terrible a deception it was, how if only you’d known. It’s all shit, never once have you said you’re sorry.” It mocked him.
“Are you mad? Do my actions not speak for themsel-”
“No,” The demon again interjected. “No, they don’t. Go on, prove me wrong, tell everyone you’re sorry, that your being sorry is why you chose Carnaca, not because of what it means to you.”
Protest died in Feru’s throat, and his eyes narrowed into angry slits, “Say what you mean, cur.”
The demon chuckled and rose, looking first to the recorder, then back down onto Feru, and gave a small shrug.
“Believe it or not ‘Siharmee, this isn’t the first time we’ve met. I know you, actually.” The words, forced an unwilling tilt of his head, Feru was curious now. He knew no demons, only the ones he had met today, and those he’d caught glimpses of during the war, and that was hardly knowing.
“You lie.” He snarled.
“No, no, you see I was there, on Carnaca, on that day. The one where you finally came out of that damn ship.” Feru’s stomach dropped, as slowly he began to put together the meaning of the demon’s taunts. He knew where this story was going.
“The runt you brought with you, and the bastard, not your only sons are they Feru? So quick you’ve forgotten dear ole’ Kanai. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget him. He was your spitting image you know? Genuinely couldn’t tell you apart.” Feru lunged furiously, but ultimately in vain against his restraints. The demon laughed, mocking him as it dared to mention his fallen son, bled dry in Carnaca’s ruined capitol city. 
Ronar had nearly been demoted to major, denied the path to Zealot for the insubordination he showed following his brother’s death, a lifetime of struggling against the brand of bastardy undone by grief for the one who some whispered had taken his place. Rtar, though he never spoke it, crushed himself beneath the weight of his guilt for not being Kanai’s carbon copy. And their mother, she’d never recovered. Nor had he, for his failure to protect him.
“You know what else I remember? What you told him when you looked out over that city you’d reduced to a nightmare. I didn’t speak your language at the time, but I learned it just to know what you’d said to him,” The Spartan paused, and turned back to face him, cocking his head slightly in mockery.
“I mean, it must’ve been important. He kept muttering it when I cut him open. I thought he was you, it was you I was after. But he worked just fine.” Feru lost what composure he had left and let out a thundering roar, straining against the shackles, the chains straining so fiercely that some of the dark armored cravens became animated. They were afraid he’d get loose, which meant he could get loose, so long as his fury did not fail him.
The demon seemed unbothered.
“You wretch, unbind me so that I might show your band of cowards what a warrior is compared to a slayer of women and children.” Feru screamed, realzing all too late that he was performing exactly as desired, the demon’s laughter hammering that home.
“That’s rich coming from you. What, does doing your killing of innocents from orbit instead wash your hands of it?”
“No, I-”
“What then, were you just too weak to look them in the eyes? Because it might’ve made you question?”
“No! No I-,”
The demon hit him, an armored fist rocking his head sideways and spraying blood across the nearby wall, painting the feautreless gray metal with a spash of indigo. Feru made no noise, instead turning back towards the demon with a solemn fury in his eyes. The Spartan had stood aside, so that the recorder had a full view of him.
“Tell them what you told him, what you told me.” It demanded.
“Rot in hell, demon.”
“Tell. Them.” Anger rose in its voice, and Feru twisted his mandibles into a human smile. He would strike back in whatever way he could, even if it was in a manner as small as this.
“Tell them!” It roared, and in answer Feru simply spit blood onto its boots. It moved, and stepped behind him, pulling a blade from its back, a wicked curved blade the humans called a karambit. He’d seen Imps use them in the war, usually in desperation, he knew what they could do in the right hands. But still he did not answer. The demon pulled him upwards to his feet, for the first time he saw into the next room and the world beyond it.
It was not Andesia, nor was it Carnaca. They were somewhere else entirely.
“Stand there, on the graves of my untold billions, and tell them what you told me.” Silence.
“Tell them that you were only doing your duty to your gods.” The demon hissed in disgust, kicking Feru’s legs out from under him, the chains that bound him yanking his arms back painfully. The blade moved in an instant, cold metal cutting in above one mandible, and splitting flesh before sinking into his eye with a wet squelch. The pain was unbearable, and yet he bore it, if not for himself, for his sons. 
The demon crouched again, this time beside him, snapping Feru’s gaze towards him by force as one hand wrapped around a mandible, whilst the other held the blade to his throat.
It poured hatred into Feru with eyes unseen, before turning its head back to the recorder, saying nothing, yet saying everything as it let is last words hang. In that moment, he realized in spite of his efforts, he had been made a message nonetheless. A message to all Sangeheili, or perhaps to all who dared dream of a future of peace.
“Their ghosts may not haunt you.” It uttered, just loud enough to hear. “But I will.”
The demon opened his throat, and spilled his lifeblood out before him, another body in the demon's war.
==Chapter 2==
Fifteen days they’d been gone, a third of that he’d spent in a hospital bed, another in rehab, and the final one being spent in debrief after debrief. Finally though, they’d cut Gil loose, and the first thing he’d done was armor up and hit the sims. He’d been at it for hours, running weapon drills, close quarters scenarios, IED courses, over and over he ran himself through the mission. His mind screamed with a single question; How?
They were, had been, Spartans. They were humanity’s elite, as cunning as they were capable, they did not get ambushed, not like that. Billions, if not trillions, had been sunk into the armor they wore, most traditional human weapons wouldn’t do anything but sting a bit, and yet, his team, his family, was dead.
Chuol had been impaled through the throat by the contents of the first wave of IEDs, his helmet cam showing him shielding the now missing Fer ‘Sihar at the cost of his own life, committed to the mission to the last. Colombo had lived though, only to die because he had been too slow, they’d insisted there was no way he could’ve reacted in time, but Gil didn’t care, it was his fault. Then, Iliana. She’d been outright executed by something with speed and strength to match her own, and though Gil had a thousand theories, he’d been given no answers about who or what had taken her apart like that.
The way the color had drained from the spook doing his debriefing when he saw the figure told him plenty though. More ONI secrets, he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Some of the attackers had been ID’d though, he reminded himself as he rounded a corner in the virtual simulation of a city block, submachinegun tight in his grip. Ex-UNSC, all of them. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, they came from all over, mostly special forces too, personally he’d killed three who’d once been his bretheren in the Helljumpers. The betrayal stung almost as much as the loss.
They were extremists, Human Supremacists, Sapien Sunrise. The exact cell was still indeterminate, but from the second they’d been assigned to the mission, they’d known it was them they were keeping an eye out for. Life after the war hadn’t been kind to veterans, and for those that couldn’t readjust there were only a few options, the most popular being reenlistment, rebellion, or revenge.
Mercenary work, or outright offing oneself was also popular too, but it was revenge that stuck out the most. There was no money in it, no dreams of changing a broken system, no final end to the nightmares, just revenge. They’d hurt us, now we’d hurt them. 
Gil couldn’t find it in himself to blame them before, God knew he had his feelings about the Split-Jaws and their so called ‘alliance’, but things were clearer now. Gil snapped up the M20 SMG and hosed a trio of simulated insurrectionists with gunfire before they could react, pivoting to another, then another, the artificial opposition scrambling to counter as he laid into them.
Their ideals, and his feelings about them, none of it meant a damn thing now. Fifteen days ago, they’d taken his family away, and the first chance he got to get back at them, he’d make it right in blood. 
Rounds hammered against him, and Gil dropped behind a civilian truck, clearing out the SMG and hastily reloading the weapon as his shield sparked. He didn’t wait for them to spring, back, a barrage forcing the golden shimmer encasing him to flare and die, but not before he put quick bursts into each of the shooters. In here he was fast enough, so why was it that out there he was-
Gil saw it too late, one of the sim-innies hefting an RPG right at him.
“Shit.” He cursed as the explosive left its launcher and enveloped him in a ball of fire. Simulated pain stung at him, real force threw him to the ground, and self-inflicted frustration overtook him. He slammed and armored fist into the floor of the sim deck, and before he could call for the AI to run it again, he caught someone new out of the corner of his eye.
He almost bellowed at them to piss off, that he had the deck for another hour, until he recognized the blue armor and silver visor of the approaching Spartan. Elias Gael had lived where the others hadn’t, and as cruel as it was, Gil’s mind quickly questioned why Elias had lived where the rest of Anchor hadn’t.
Guilt stabbed him like a knife for even letting the thought form, said blade twisting as his fellow survivor worldessly offered him a hand up. Gil took it and sighed hard, looking about the utterly empty room and shaking his head once he was on his foot.
“That was fucking stupid, should’ve waited on my shields.” Gil grumbled.
“Yeah, should’ve. You’ll get ‘em next time.” The other Spartan offered with a small nod, Gil smiled slightly under his helmet, and immediately felt guilt for it, then embarrassment for how the guilt had impacted him. He’d lost people before, lots of people, and as a Spartan he was supposed to be able to handle that, keep going, but this time he’d been left to sit with it. 
“Why are you here Elias?” He asked before he could think better of it.
“I-,”
“Not literally, I mean on Anchor. You were with Lightning when we graduated, they weren’t on Infinity, how’d you end up our new number five?” He felt bad for cutting off his peer, but Gil had been holding back that question for a while now. Fireteam Lightning, whose name he still couldn’t understand being still untaken by the time the Spartan Class of 2557 graduated, had been one of the teams not placed with the main contingent of Spartan Operations on Infinity, shipped off to who knew where to do who knew what, but given their rankings in the class, Gil knew Lighting had been sent to where the action was.
“Oh.” Elias tilted his head for a moment, and took in an inhale large enough for Gil to notice even with the updated Mark V(B) MJOLNIR on. There was silence for what felt like a long time, even through it had been but a few seconds, then he shrugged.
“Why do you think?” The blue Spartan challenged, a hint of something brewing in his voice.
“Elias, please.” Gil needed to hear him say it, so he could put together why he’d come here literally, to the sim deck. But he already knew the answer.
“Boarding op went sideways. Lost one to depressurization and a suit breach, another two a munitions store detonating, lead vanished with most of the ship when the slipspace drive went off.” Even with one ton of armor each separating the two of them, Gil knew then and there the two were feeling the same thing. Spartan training and experience made them the best there was, second to none, but even that, and millions of credits in equipment didn’t make them invincible. Elias story also served to remind him that Anchor was large for a Spartan Team, had been anyway.
Jasper had chosen the mission, Hadrian too, and Iliana. If anyone had tried to blame the latter for pursuing their charge, he’d have wrung them by the neck himself. You had to make split second decisions in combat, take risks, she’d done everything right, it was his fault she was gone. It seemed Fireteam Lighting had gotten dealt a similar hand, one of utterly rotten luck. Elias had been sure to save Anchor from total mission failure, protecting Holt from assassination and preserving their honor in doing so. Gil wondered if it’d just been him completing the mission, or trying to do right by his comrades.
“I see, I’m sorry.” Gil spoke more softly.
“I know.” Elias assured him, “Me too.”
Silence followed again, and the two Spartans stood awkwardly, Gil rolling his shoulder to relieve latent soreness from the blast in the sim, Elias flexing his hands into fists then open palms again. Finally, Elias decided to get back to the present.
“The reason I’m down here is because Wetzel called for us.” Elias informed him. Gerlind Wetzel, Anchor’s Spartan Handler, had visited him when he was down. She was grieving too, she’d always resented being assigned to handler after injuries taken in the first round on Requiem, along with multiple casualties on her team. She’d wanted back in the fight, but instead she’d done the job so well she’d gotten herself permanently reassigned to handler. She blamed herself not being on the ground just as Gil blamed himself for being too slow. She’d always been distant from them, having been far more deeply bonded to her old team, but still, she was an Anchor. Wetzel had promised Gil he could take all the time he’d need, if she was calling, it had to be important.
And yet, Gil couldn’t wait.
“Why?” He asked, raising a brow behind the red-orange of his helmet’s faceplate. Elias thankfully took the question well enough to answer it, but the way he stiffened still wasn’t enough of a forewarning for what followed.
“Feru just got his throat cut, llive on the chatternet,” A punch to the stomach, but Gil already knew there was more. “And the executioner is a Spartan.”
Gil’s stomach twisted in a knot, and he questioned if it would ever come out again.
----
Two thousand, one hundred, and fifty five days. He missed them, Daffodil, half a decade since the last of them was gone and half a decade he’d been so utterly alone. They’d tried shifting him around, putting him on different teams, with Fours, other Threes, for one op they’d even embedded him with Black Team, but none of it was a fit. The evaluators didn’t understand, Mubiru-B286 had always been a team player, during the war he’d been the first to split off with a band of marines, taking already skilled and well trained warriors and maximizing their potential. And his effect on other Spartans? Why it’d made him a hot item in the days after Daffodil was gone, but he’d known that, that every one of the beaming, sycophantic, scheming officer of every imaginable unit tried to get him as their man.
Each and all were disappointed, because he knew what he was to them, just a piece in some grander puzzle. But he wasn’t that, Daffodil hadn’t been that. At least the Boogeyman valued him as a warfighter, as an individual, it made the wetwork more bearable.
Still, he could only imagine Adesuwa or Neil cracking wise about how the spook was a little too comfortable yanking a Spartan too and fro. It was what they were meant for, taking orders, ending lives, but there was something about the way Markko Kallas did things that made Mubiru scoff to himself. Probably because unlike other spooks, whatever great moral compromise he presented was something that would happen, not just some bluff. Among all the men and women playing at being orchestrators of killing, only Kallas stuck out as a true maestro of death, and it was utterly absurd.
Mubiru folded his armored hands over one another as he sat alone in the empty briefing room, surrounded by empty chairs that would’ve shattered if he’d sat down in them in his full MJOLNIR. Sometimes he’d have company, Kallas had his own company-sized strike force who’d back him when needed, and carry out their own missions when they weren’t. Clad in black armor with golden visors, the only consistent pop of color in Kallas’ enforcers was the white top of their helmets, which itself was some skunkworks model he didn’t recognize.
He’d tried to do research on them once, see their files, get an idea of who he was working with. Thirty seconds after he’d run the search, five of them had been at his cabin door, armed, politely asking him to refrain from doing so again. They knew they couldn’t take him, but it didn’t matter, and Mubiru knew better than to cross the element who usually secured one’s exfil.
Regardless, no one was here, only him. Until it wasn’t. Markko Kallas strode through the door, his mutilated visage worn proudly as always, two of the aforementioned enforcers at his side. He looked to where Mubiru stood, and gave a coarse chuckle, it sounded like it hurt, but so did everything the man vocalized.
“No point telling you to sit then.” The ONI agent chuckled.
“Was running checks on the new gear.” Mubiru admitted freely, the CELOX helmet now encasing his head was a prototype, building off current generation MJOLNIR in a substantial way. It, and other such experimental equipment, were just perks of the job.
“Time for a field test I suppose. I hope you’re ready.” Ominous, but again, what did Kallas ever say that wasn’t? It wouldn’t give Mubiru pause if it were any other spook, but no matter how strange and foreboding Kallas made things sound, he was always telling the truth. At least, enough of it.
“When am I not?” Mubiru shot back, folding his arms over one another, with Kallas looking up and him and boring a hole into Mubiru’s eyes through the visor. There wasn’t a hint of amusement, nor anything other than utter emptiness.
“Right now.” Kallas swiped his fingers over several keys on the datapad in his hands, and immediately a projection of an Elite in an electric blue combat harness was projected at the front of the room. Bits of information populated in boxes beside his figure, former rank, notable combat actions, and any Spartan kills he might’ve had, though that number was a dfeinitive zero it seemed.
“This is Feru ‘Sihar, a warlord in control of three worlds, one of them, Carnaca, was a human colony he personally glassded during the war. Its been a point of contention as of late.” Kallas began, though Mubiru took the momentary lull as a chance to scoff at the idea that such an arrangement wouldn’t be contentious. Kallas didn’t react.
“Fifteen days ago he went to Andesia to negotiate a solution to the Carnaca situation, however in broad daylight he and his escort were ambushed, ‘Sihar himself was kidnapped.” The projection shifted to footage of the attack, MJOLNIR helmet cam footage no less. Mubiru took it all in, the precision of the attack, the valiant efforts of the defenders, the flatlining Spartans. They were good, whoever these extremists were, but he wasn’t clear why that needed to involve him. The footage changed, somewhat lower quality than the footage taken from one ‘Spartan Gael’, it was Feru ‘Sihar on his knees, throat being slit by a man in a cobbled together mess of armor, with SPI unmistakably the base.
“He was executed live this afternoon, one with the blade is a Spartan. We need this situation handled.” It wasn’t the first Spartan to go rogue, there had been several in recent memory, but ONI had dedicated units for that, even if they didn’t want to admit it. There were always whispers, but he’d seen the drills Kallas’ troops ran, and they weren’t fooling Mubiru. Yet he’d pulled him for this.
“Why me?” The Spartan inquired, the way Kallas’ expression sombered immediately told him he wouldn’t like the answer, nor did he.
“Because of every Spartan at our disposal, you’re the only one left who knows him.” Mubiru’s heart sunk in his chest as the screen flickered to a new screen, a dossier. Grain photos of the SPI-clad terrorist taken from several dozen different attacks populated the display, as did the last profile taken of the rogue before he went AWOL.
He had a long scar ran from one cheek over his nose and up above his brow, along with a dozen others, but what haunted Mubiru most were his eyes, the spark gone from the green in them, something empty now in its place. Mubiru wondered if he’d have recognized him if the Spartan’s name hadn’t been splayed across the top of the image, but it hurt him that he did.
Callum-B042 stared out at him, no longer the frightened boy Mubiru remembered, the one who’d been his friend, who he’d protected from the other trainees who found strength in targeting the weak. But he was dead, dead like all the others, turned to ash when TORPEDO fell apart, and yet there he was. Older, battered, and somehow angrier. 
Mubiru stayed quiet for a moment, watching the footage from another Spartan’s helmet as Callum emerged from nothing and brutally executed another Spartan. He hadn’t even flinched, not even a little. Callum used to shake after he took a shot on the range, the adrenaline too much for the boy to handle. But here his hands were steady, the wounds he dealt were precise and intentional. How could this be real?
“Is this some kind of test, sir?” Mubiru’s expression soured, eyes narrowed, questioning what the purpose of this exercise could even be.
“No. Spartan-B042 and six others also survived Operation TORPEDO, though it was kept largely classified. The others are dead now, and once you’re done he’ll be too.” There wasn’t any room to question the ONI Agent, but Mubiru didn’t care, not this time.
“Any reason capture is off the table, sir?” The Spartan asked, his voice rigid as he struggled to maintain composure.
“Those are the orders, Lieutenant.”
“Markko, you’re telling me a friend I thought was gone, isn’t, and then telling me to kill him. Respectfully, sir, if my knowing Callum played determined my selection, then I at least have a right to-,” 
“The Swords of Sangheilios want him alive, Spartan, Feru is blood to Rtas ‘Vadum. The Elites may be better than the Brutes, but their plans for him are doubtlessly unpleasant. Would you prefer that? If he’s taken alive, that’ll be his fate, without question, do you prefer he spend months, years even, in the dungeon of some hinge-head? Or will you give him a warrior’s death?” Kallas spoke in grandiose terms when he dared to show hints of emotions, and though Mubiru was confident he was masking the reality of the situation, he was just as sure that Callum’s fate would be in the hands of the Elites if he didn’t put him down.
So that was it, a friend returned from the dead, and he was going to kill him for it.
Mubiru gave a terse nod, relenting in his questions.
“Get some rest, we’ll be with your team for this mission in t-minus 12 hours.” Mubiru again nodded, snapping off a quick salute and making his way for the door, hoping he might be able to process things before they were in the heat of battle. The mention of a team barely even registered to him, but he was sure he’d have their dossiers reviewed before he finally got some sleep.
“And Spartan,” Kallas called as he nearly crossed the threshold out of the briefing room, bringing his gaze back over his shoulder to the malformed enigma of a man. “Your friend is gone, the target is not the boy you knew anymore, not in his soul. Honor him by ending this.”
Mubiru scoffed, what did Markko Kallas know about souls?
----
Four thousand, eight hundred, and thirty four days. Six hours, fifteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds. He still saw it now, the mission clock burned into his mind, the last element of his HUD to have flickered out as the molten visor of his armor had melted onto his face. He saw it in his every waking moment, saw it in every horrid nightmare, a haunting reminder that he was not done. Not until they were all avenged.
Callum-B042 stared with an empty gaze into the jaw-emblazoned faceplate of his battered SPI armor, purple blood dried over the beaten orange glass. The hunt was on now, they’d come looking for them, come hunting, and from there they’d galvanize the rest of humanity. Since the war he’d watched as they lived in fear, worrying that one misstep, one wrong word, might reignite conflict. Jackal outposts in ruined cities, Drone hives beneath them, Grunt settlements across burned plain, Brute packs taking entire continents for themselves, and Elites claiming dominion over the very colonies they’d glassed. If it’d stopped there, that would’ve been enough, but it didn’t. Alien ‘refugees’ were sheltered across the inner colonies, even Earth, abandoned when their Covenant shattered, now forcing their would-be victims to become their hosts.
And the UNSC, even with all its newfound might, even with a ship that would let them rule the stars, even with a thousand Spartans, they just sat there and took it, rolled over, played nice, stayed busy killing other human beings in the name of control. It’d taken him so long to see through it all, to break from their conditioning, from their lies, but he had in the end.
The reflection that stared back at him was a cruel visage. Dark stubble joined a thick head of head of hair he’d let grow out for the first time in his life, more scars accented his features now, his nose was crooked from a break, his left ear malformed from injury. Once upon a time the UNSC could’ve righted all of that, had he stayed their loyal dog, but Callum didn’t mind it. He was alive, he was his own, and he wore the cost of that proudly. They didn’t own him, they were the ones who’d forgotten their duty to protect humanity, to stop it from ever facing such a threat again.
Cowards and traitors, all of them. How easily they forgot the hundreds of children they turned into weapons then sent into their deaths. How quick they were to spit on the sacrifices of his brothers and sisters, of the billions more who’d picked up a rifle, or merely threw themselves in the way of a bolt of plasma to spare another. That was to say nothing of those who’d never had a chance to fight, or had been too afraid, who’d been frozen in terror, crying out for mercy that would not come.
He wondered if the likes Margarey Holt and other politicians really understood. Sure, some of them had been there, some fought, some tried to save lives, but they still didn’t seem to understand. Had they ever been inside a glassing shelter, filled with corpses lost to time? Or inside a Jiralhanae camp, where they tore men, women, and children alike into pieces for meal and sport? Had they ever walked through the corpse of a glassed city, where the only bones left were those of steel and glass, where all the people who’d called it home were nothing but ash?
Callum doubted it, but he’d been to all of them, and more. Their peace was a lie built on a mountain of corpses stacked inconceivably high, and he would not turn a blind eye to it, nor was he alone.
The door to his quarters slid open, and he was ripped from his contemplation to the dark-armored figure standing at the entrance. The Hellbringer armor was still a massive thing, even in a more slimming color, the domed helmet’s faceplate was a silver-white, the skull of a Sangheili emblazoned upon it in black. A small smile curled at the edge of his lips, and he nodded for them to enter. Wordlessly, the Hellbringer did, closing the door behind them and once it’d sealed, pulling away the helmet.
A blonde tangle fell down as she pulled it away, the her lone brown eye meeting his as she took in a breath of fresh air, free of the armored casing.
“Hey.” Callum offered, as Zarina Beganovic pulled a chair away from the wall and set it down in front of the cot he’d claimed for his open.
“Hey.” She answered in kind, taking a seat and giving him the slightest of smiles. It tugged at the left side of her lip, while the right stayed largely still, as it always did. Up the right side of her face the flesh was warped, scarred from where an Elite Ultra, displeased with her unit’s incineration of his lance, had decided to test the limits of the marines by seeing how long they could bear his blade against their flesh. The answer had been twofold; long enough to pull a hidden sidearm, but just long enough for him to horrifically scar the last marine alive. She was ashamed, but Callum didn’t mind.
She must’ve been quite something before the burns, but to him, she still was. Callum didn’t quite understand those feelings, what they meant, but he knew that he trusted her as his right hand, as his closest friend.
“It’s all in motion now then?” She asked rhetorically, the Spartan nodding softly as he set his helmet aside, freeing his hands to sit empty at his sides. They’d laid the groundwork for this for years, Carnaca had simply fallen into their laps. They’d had other targets, different warlords, different colonies, but their distinctions wouldn’t matter soon. 
“Think they’ll send Blue Team? Always did want to meet the Chief.” Zarina questioned, to which Callum only scoffed, and shook his head.
“No, maybe once we pull this off, but it’ll be done by then.” They’d been his heroes once, on Onyx he and the others had studied their exploits closely, learning from them, absorbing all they could from the accomplishments of humanities most capable soldiers. Now he couldn't help but loathe them. John-117 had made a friend of Thel ‘Vadamee, the Arbiter, and in his absence his ‘friend’ had done nothing to stop his people’s continued exploitation of humanity. Because he was a butcher, a monster, and in time he’d get his too. 
Callum had no illusions about what would happen when they or some team like them came, whatever success he’d had against the Fireteam on Andesia, or the Headhunters in the glasslands on Troy, it wouldn’t carry over. He knew how that fight would end, so did she, but it never stopped the bit that followed.
“I still think we can take them.” She leaned forward, elbows on her thighs, head in her hands, trying to spread more of the hard earned levity across his face. It worked, he couldn’t help it, shaking his head with an exasperated sigh and a chuckle. Callum knew better, knew what was going to happen, what always happened, but he couldn’t help himself. Some part of himself was still a boy, desperate to care and be cared for, to protect the people he care about.
But he wasn’t strong enough, then or now, and she’d die as they had. Zarina knew that though, new what the end was, and yet she still sat across from him, a small smile still on her face.
“Yeah, I bet you do.” He leaned forward to, the smile fading as darkness rolled into his mind, and fury tugged at his features. The little ones always tried so hard to be brave, to fight like their elders, to stave off their eradication. They’d become no better than their fathers, Callum knew what was necessary, what had to be done, but the reality left him so angry.
“Why did they make us do this?” He wondered aloud, perhaps for the first time, frustrated anger seeping into every word. This thing he’d become, it wasn’t what he was meant to be, he knew that. When he’d been a boy, all he’d wanted was to be a farmer, just like his father. “Why couldn’t they have just left us alone?”
Zarina’s expression softened, from her small happiness to something mournful, then something angry.
“Because it is their nature, Callum, they’re born evil.” She whispered, hate on her tongue. He wanted to believe her, to simply understand and agree, but blurred moments flashing through his mind of mothers shielding their young, the young shielding their mothers, of innumerable futile sacrifices made to perhaps save anyone from him, it all called her words into question. And she saw it, and she knew how to killed it. Zarina leaned closer, reaching out and grabbing his hand, giving it a small squeeze and calling his gaze to her own.
“It isn’t just about us, you, me, or even the rest of humanity. We weren’t the first species to defy the Covenant, right Callum? Just the only one to survive them. Where was the justice for them? Those civilizations they erased from the galactic goddamn record? No one is left to avenge them, and not once did any of those Covenant bastards ever question it. If they weren’t born rotten, the Covenant would’ve fallen apart the first time they wiped a species out, because of even a handful of those fucks had a soul the outrage of an evil so great would’ve been intolerable.” He’d been the one to tell her those things, about the Covenant’s history, their past in the stars. In the moment he must’ve thought exactly as she had, but somewhere in the blood and bodies he’d forgotten. But she didn’t, and she kept him on course.
“You’re right.” He relented, gently squeezing her hand back, careful not to harm her as his resolve solidified once more. A singular purpose filled him back up, and his doubts subsided. Callum’s left her own. She seemed confused at first, then hurt, then seemed to understand, though a sadness lingered in her eye as she rose to go. He should’ve stopped her, but the words never came as she donned the helmet once more.
“Callum?” She paused, looking back over her shoulder as he glowered, gaze set firmly onto the nothingness between himself and the nearest wall. He flicked his eyes towards her, and waited for whatever question would follow.
“What if they bring the wrong kind of ship?” He’d considered the possibility, Callum had done the research, he was confident in what was coming after them. Softer voices insisted he make some small remark, some playful suggestion that the two of them could simply throw up their hands, go somewhere peaceful. But he remembered them, how they’d died on Pegasi, how they died on Reach, and how even though the latter had been avenged, it never made the pain less. Memories of camaraderie, brother and sisterhood, stolen glances, quiet smiles and jabs between teenages woefully unaware of how to be more than a weapon, they all tormented him. Callum knew how this would end, why hurt himself more?
“They won’t.” He answered, returning to his pondering of the empty abyss. The UNSC would bring all the tools he needed right to his doorstep, and before he was gone, he’d remind humanity what it was capable of, and its enemies of what awaited them.
==Chapter 3==
They walked in stride, encased in their MJOLNIR, all three of them. Gil had been forced to practically beg, but eventually Gerlind Wetzel had been permitted to join them aboard the UNSC I Am Your Father to serve as joint mission handler for their strike. He’d tried to have her in the field as part of the strike element, but that’d been a bridge too far apparently. ONI had their own Spartan they wanted on the mission, and for whatever reason having a team of three was preferable to a team of four. Anchor had been specialized in direct assault, heavy contact deployments, it’d been why they had five Spartans in the field instead of the customary four, which made the insistence by the shadowy agency that only three augmented operatives be in the field be all the more perplexing.
It wouldn’t even be just them, Ronar and Rtar ‘Sihar were going to be joining them with their own strike force, a vengeance raid they’d called it, and of course ONI had provided their own supplementary manpower. Gil knew Bravo 2-7, ‘Bad Omens’ by reputation, if there were ever a band of spooks to not cross, it was them.
Still, she should’ve been able to go in with them, Anchor had been her family too.
“Not a word about it, Gilberto.” She always used his whole name, never shortened it. In her simple RECRUIT-pattern MJOLNIR she should’ve come off as nothing more than a fresh faced Laconia graduate, but standing at nearly seven feet tall and sporting a long scar across the armor from a Hardlight blade, Gerlind commanded respect with ease. 
“Wasn’t planning on it.” He lied as the three Spartans kept pace, Elias scoffing quietly at the remark. The two of them had gotten to talking during the trip in slipspace, ran drills together in the War Games sim back to back to back. If they were going to come out on top, their teamwork could not be anything short of perfect they’d both agreed. As it turned out, Elias too had been a Helljumper, and though they’d pounded dirt on different battlefields, their time in the war had been all but the same.
Too young for Special Operations under normal circumstances, too green, but after they survived one brush with the Covenant and showed a modicum of potential, the Corps came calling. The ODSTs were burning through their ranks faster than they could ever hope to replenish them, but it didn’t stop them from trying in those desperate final years. Shortened training, boldness to the point of stupidity, and already long odds made ever longer meant that Gil, Elias, and every other Helljumper who’d joined any time in the last two decades had the same stories. Those few who’d survived had also come out more lethal than most, though how they used that skill varied from jarhead to jarhead.
But he and Elias, they’d chosen to stay, chosen to take the next step, and instead of putting them against the enemy they’d fought all their lives, they were squaring off against their own kind, worse, their own brothers and sisters in arms. Gil had thought his grief and anger would’ve kept any conflicted feelings out of the affair, yet they had found their way back in. They were victims in a way, to their grief, to their anger, and had he stopped seeing them as such, he’d have been no different. Fireteam Anchor had been his family, and he’d avenge them, but they were not the first one he had lost.
As the Spartans rounded another corner, their HUDs marked the briefing room they were bound for up ahead. Once they stepped through, the mission would be on, and there would be no time for doubts, for hesitation, so Gil ran through the last of his thoughts. His father, his uncle and aunt, all his cousins, they’d all been cut to pieces by Jackals on Atlas. The others, his mother, his grandparents, his twin brother and baby sister, they’d all been erased by a glassing beam through the tent city they’d found themselves stranded in on Tribute. He’d been away, fighting the same war on another world, lightyears too far away to protect the people he was fighting for in the first place. How many of their targets had the same story? Grief and rage led them to fight, and took them away from those they had left so they could die too.
It seemed like the Human-Covenant War had touched every single human being, everyone had lost someone. How could he fault them for not letting go, even if he knew it was wrong? He still felt that same, twisting rage when he encountered the Kig-Yar, and if he had a few hundred nukes maybe he’d have gone to Eayan and made things square, consequences be damned. At least that was what he thought he might do in the deep hours of the night. 
Almost three decades of genocide, of wanton murder and destruction. In his heart, Gil knew a dark part of him wanted to do as they did, but he’d seen there was more to them, to their shared future. Rtar ‘Sihar was young, his hands clean of the blood shed by the Covenant, and though the young Kadion had made no secret of his ambitions for revenge, not a single action had been taken against the people of Carnaca. No retribution, no escalation of their methods, in fact he’d seemingly ordered that more be done for the humans of the world. A human had taught the Elite to wield an M6 with such proficiency, that much Gil knew, which meant Rtar kept their company. He was a boy trying to do right by his father, but more importantly, simply trying to do right.
What would the galaxy be if they didn’t try to build a better tomorrow?
“Ready to get even?” Elias questioned as they stopped.
The Spartan stowed the questions in the back of his mind for some other time, and put himself into the moment. 
“Affirmative.” Gerlind answered first, a hint of the frustration he knew was brewing making itself known in her voice. She should’ve been coming, but he reminded himself again that was no longer up for debate.
“Yeah, let’s go get this son of bitch.”
The three exchanged nods, and Gil touched the panel next to the briefing room’s sliding door, in an instant the ship’s Smart AI ran his and the other Spartans entire files, validating clearances, confirming and cross-checking privileges and a dozen other fields. Before Gil had managed to blink, the panel lit green, let out a soft chime, and the door slid open.
The mission began then and there.
----
Mubiru had been standing at a relaxed rest for the past fifteen minutes as the three Spartans now standing in the door had made their way through the I Am Your Father‘s maze of lifts and corridors into the heart of the ONI operated Super-Heavy Cruiser. The ship was built on the bones of an old Valiant-class, but practically everything had been stripped away and replaced with weapons and technology on the bleeding edge. It’d once been the workhouse of some ghost known only by his Codename, MAGICIAN, but true to his title the man had seemingly disappeared. Given the nature of ONI’s internal politicking, Mubiru had wondered if the spook had some ‘help’ in his vanishing.
In the end though, she’d come under Kallas’ command, and thus had been his home for nearly three years. But he still remembered how long it’d taken him to get a handle on the layout, so with all things considered, the Spartan-IVs had made decent time.
“Spartans, good of you to join us.” Spoke the burly man in dark armor standing opposite of Mubiru. His dark hair was slicked back, his jaw square, nose broken and healed at a slight tilt, his usual confident half-smirk on his lip. Captain Salvatore Romano had been one of MAGICIAN’s men, when the change in management occurred, he’d come over too. Terrifyingly talented as both a leader and combatant, he’d been the natural choice to lead Bravo 2-7 after their last CO had met the back end of a Brute Shot. He didn’t much care for Spartans though, something he made clear with little more than inflections in his voice and mannerisms, he was too professional to let it go beyond that.
The three other supersoldiers giving curt salutes to the officer, who dismissed them with a wave. Two of the three, the ones marked on his HUD as Gael and Vargas, would be going in alongside them, the other was going to be running operation oversight with Kallas. Why she wasn’t going to be on the ground with them was a mystery, but Mubiru hadn’t tried rationalizing the orders he was given in some time. Their armor stuck out too, the two going to ground with him anyway; each of them sported upgraded Mark V(B) systems just as he did. An unusual choice for Spartan Fours, who preferred the vast array of GEN2 platforms purpose built for their generation of supersoldier as opposed to refits of the older armors.
He wondered what’d lead to their selection, if it was a practical choice born of preference towards the larger quantity of physical armor, or if it’d been made out of sentimentality. Their armors weren’t vibrantly colored to the point of absurdity as some of their kin chose to do, but the color schemes were distinct enough for him to be sure there had been a deal of personal thought that went into them, Vargas in particular. His armor sported a color scheme far too similar to one SPARTAN-052 to be a coincidence, though the overall components all but screamed his ODST heritage. He wondered what the deceased Spartan Two had done to inspire it, but from Mubiru’s incredibly small time with Jorge, he imagined it was a well earned tribute.
“Take a spot in the back, need my boys to be able to see everything.” Romano instructed, the other Spartans complying without a word, though even with their visors hiding it, he knew each of them had thrown a glance to him as he stood with hands folded behind his back.
“Alright, let’s get started.” The lights dimmed on command as Romano began the briefing. It was all things Mubiru had already heard, after all he’d been the one to assemble most of the intelligence alongside Wayne, the ship’s AI. He and Romano had hashed out insertion, engagement, and exfil a day ago, and coordinated their plans with the ‘Sihar force when they linked up prior to the last jump. So Mubiru let the veteran captain give the assembled operators the rundown, and waited for his time to speak.
Whilst Romano broke down the team composition and the extremely relaxed rules of engagement, Mubiru looked out on the room’s occupants. The men and women of Bravo 7-2 came in every color and from a bafflingly diverse assortment of backgrounds. For every former NAVSPECWAR operator and ONI strike team veteran, there was a pair of ex-Army troopers, or colonial militia fighters that Kallas had hand picked after crossing paths with them. Some hadn’t ever even seen combat before they became an Omen, some he wasn’t sure had even been military of any kind before. SWAT members, beat cops, kids at university, farmhands, that was all he could find about some of them. But for all their differences, they shared enough in common. Each had been personally recruited by Markko Kallas, and every one was one of the most dangerous unaugmented individuals Mubiru had ever met, and he’d been among special warfare operators since he was four years old.
He watched as they listened, leaned forward in their gray fatigues, absorbing every detail of the mission plan. Consciously, Mubiru took note that Romano had moved from the basics of the operation to their high value targets, which meant he’d be up soon. Dangerous scout-snipers, mad Hellbringers, AWOL SABERs and ODSTs, Romano’s list of targets was anything but short.
The entire operation made him uneasy in a way he knew it must’ve made the rest of them who’d served in the war. It was something they’d dealt with on practically every counterinsurgency operation post-war, fighting the people they’d once stood beside, but he’d always been spared that, sure Spartans had gone rogue, it’d never been his job to deal with it.
Until now, where it wasn’t just someone who’d once been on the same side, wasn’t just someone who’d endured Onyx and Mendez like he had, it was his friend. The only one he still had too. Prior to this, Mubiru had all but written off those among Beta Company he’d called his friends as dead, those few that remained among the living had been acquaintances at best. Then he’d been given Callum back, only to be ordered to put him down.
People sometimes said the universe, God, fate, or life itself was an uncaring, indifferent thing. He didn’t agree, whatever higher power or grand scheme there was, it was outright cruel. 
“And for our big fish, I’ll pass it off to Mubiru.” He came back to the present as Romano made a sweeping gesture to him, and the Spartan stepped forward with only a second’s hesitation. Automatically the dossier of the last target, some Hellbringer named Zarina, flicked away and was replaced by the same one he had seen before with Kallas. This one of course sported a deal more black ink, particularly around Callum’s date of enlistment, and anything else that would’ve screamed ‘child soldier’. It felt pointless, they might not have said it, but Mubiru doubted anyone in the room had any illusions about how far the UNSC had gone during the war.
“Morning.” He began, looking back at Callum’s projected dossier, remembering the bloody-nosed boy he’d put himself in front of a bully’s stun rounds for. The eyes of the Omens turned to him, the Spartans helmets tilted, and he knew he did not need to worry about if he had their attention.
“This is Callum Owens, Spartan tag is B042,” There were no murmurs, but he noticed the small shifts in posture and facial expression across the room. “He’s formerly of the Spartan Three program, Beta Company like myself. I’m the one giving you the brief on him 'cause the spooks think I know him best.” 
No words, no sounds, not a soul seemed to find a reason to argue, though out of the corner of his eye he caught Romano’s eyebrows raise.
“Callum was and according to all the intel we have, still is a practitioner of asymmetrical warfare. He thrives in close quarters, ambush tactics, and utilizing small explosives. In essence, this stronghold of his that we’re walking into is his preferred environment. If it weren’t for the ‘Sihar kid, we’d just hit him from orbit, call it a day. But the State of ‘Sihar wants him alive, and such a blatant regard for their wishes would make a bad situation worse,” He took a breath, catching the whispers of frustrated groans.
“However, in the heat of a firefight, things happen. Standing orders are that Spart-,” Mubiru nearly bit his tongue as he stopped himself. Callum had been stripped of Spartanhood, he had to remember that. “Owens is to be killed on sight. SPARTAN-III and it’s particulars are still classified at the highest levels, and beyond that we still don’t let our strays go into Elite torture dungeons if we can help it.”
The grumbling from the Omens subsided, but the Spartans in the back cried out their discontent with their body language. Callum had orchestrated the deaths of two of their dead comrades, then killed their former leader himself.
“Isn’t the point of this op giving ‘Sihar what they want? That’s why we’re going in at all. Why the performance if we aren’t following through?” Questioned the one in the blue armor, Spartan Elias Gael according to Mubiru’s HUD. He could’ve ignored it, could’ve let Romano take point on it, but he chose to handle it on his own.
“The hinge-heads are a warrior culture as you well know Spartan Gael, they might complain in the short term but in the end we’re still giving them all they want in the end. A dead enemy, a revenge completed.” Mubiru shrugged, though it burned him inside. He knew Callum was too far gone, he’d known from the moment he’d seen the footage, but some part of him begged to save his friend one last time.
“Yeah, but Rtar was pretty clea-“ Elias began again, mentioning the new ‘Sihar Kadion by name curiously enough.
“Orders are clear Spartan, shoot to kill, that going to be a problem?” He didn’t like it, playing the part of the harsh spook, handing out death orders that were beyond questioning, but it was the world he now lived in. Gael hardly seemed satisfied, but no further protests came.
“Now, unlike myself or Spartans Vargas, Gael, and Wetzel, Callum is not outfitted with MJOLNIR power armor. He seems to still be fielding the Semi-Powered Infiltration armor he was issued during service.” The projector shifted to a grainy image of Callum captured on some security camera in Noctus City. Shark’s jaws were painted grimly over the visor, chunks of plating were removed and replaced with pieces of different armors, some welded into place, others bound by straps and magnets. And of course, ammunition and blades were strapped all across the faded gray and green armor, with a few components painted a deep crimson here and there.
“Now, while this would put him at a disadvantage against us in a straight fight, he’s still a Spartan, and among the litany of repairs he’s made, it seems he’s also found time for upgrades.” The image flicked to video footage, hazy, but not so distorted that one could not see Callum strike a kneeling brute with enough force to tear its jaw off the hinges. Such a strike wasn’t something one could generate with any semi-powered system, Spartan or not. The clip rewound and highlighted cables running between the gaps in the armor up Callum’s striking arm, and a strange device over his hand.
“Some sort of force multiplying device is clearly installed, if it’s across the entire system or just for striking we don’t know. Also seems to have integrated some kind of thruster pack for tricky maneuvering, a Jackal shield gauntlet, what appears to be a system of stimulant autoinjectors, and given what we’ve seen and the general state of his armor,” Mubiru looked back at Spartan Vargas, and felt a twinge of guilt as the man’s own helmet footage was the next to be projected, showing Callum as he stepped forth from nothingness to execute his former Fireteam leader.
“We believe he’s integrated a functional active camouflage module as well. As you can see, the camo he’s using isn’t simply the reactive panels SPI comes with, not to mention what’s left of the base armor isn’t in any state to have that function still operable.” Vargas hadn’t turned away, if anything he’d dialed in further now that they’d come to this topic. Mubriu wondered why Callum hadn’t pilfered some old suit, or some third party power armor, or why he hadn’t been in MJOLNIR in the first place by the time he’d gone AWOL. Was the reason practical, or sentimental?
“As for armament, it could be anything. His cell of Sapien Sunrise has been known to employ everything from CMA surplus to Covenant weapons converted for human use, some of which they made the additions to themselves. As stated, Owens prefers close quarters, if any of our snipers get a shot on him that’s preferable, but no matter who gets it, it is imperative you shoot for the head, and if you can’t, shift fire until you can.” That raised eyebrows. Headshots were for showoffs, usually impractical in combat, especially in the confines of an indoor firefight. They were going to have questions. SPI was tough to be sure, but enough rounds through it would still stop whatever was wearing it, usually.
“Why the particulars?” One of the Omens questioned.
“Not an easy ask if the fight makes it inside.” Spartan Vargas added with a nod. Mubiru took in a breath, then let it out, quietly cursing the reality of the situation.
“Spartan Three Gamma Company were given additional augmentations not utilized by previous companies as the result of an illegal experiment by the project commander, Owens volunteered to be the test subject for these additional enhancements in the field.” Even the Spartans leaned in now.
“Meaning?” Questioned another of the Omens.
“Severe trauma will trigger a massive overload of adrenaline in addition to a cocktail of other chemicals to keep them in the fight. This procedure had a number of side effects, including a reliance on a counter drug to prevent the onset of a host of mental vulnerabilities and outright psychosis..” The last bit was his theory, his excuse for Callum, for why he’d slipped into the abyss, something that he knew in the end didn’t matter.
“The effect can last from fifteen minutes to several hours, but the long story short is that unless you’re taking out his brain, no matter what you blow off he’s going to keep coming, even harder than before.” That part he knew was the intended effect of the drugs, but as he recalled a boy with a bloody grin at the end of their time on Onyx, one who took the worst his former tormentors could dish out and fed them their teeth for their trouble. Mubiru wondered if Callum would’ve even needed it to get the same outcome, and questioned what seeing those traits further multiplied would’ve looked like in practice.
He hoped desperately his friend would not live long enough that Mubiru had to find out
----
Rtar seethed under his brother’s powerful grasp. The young Kadion struggled against it, grunting in anger, but he did not call out for aid of any kind. He could not be seen like this, in such a state of defeat. This raid, this mission of revenge, it had been both of their ideas, they had agreed to go after their father’s killer together, yet his bastard elder meant to deny him a place on the attack force by any means necessary.
“You must let me go, you must let me avenge him!” Rtar fumed as he attempted to break the hold the older, larger Sangheili had forced him into. It was pointless he knew, Ronar was older, more experienced, and a deal larger and stronger, any chance of his victory had died when his kin brought their engagement to close quarters. His mother had been a commoner, some field hand, but one clearly of strong stock if her son was any indication.
“I cannot. I have my duties to our father.” Ronar said again, as firm as ever.
“And I have my duties as Kadion, as well as to him! You cannot deny me this!” Rtar squirmed and freed and arm, throwing back an elbow into his elder brother’s head, stunning him long enough to wrestle himself free, but not long enough to stop the vicious counter blows and grapple that forced him back into the same position.
“You cannot beat me little brother, not yet.” It was not a taunt, only a fact. Rtar knew it as well as Ronar did, but that did not bring any clarity to his infuriated mind. Ronar could’ve made it public, could’ve made it some play for power, but that wasn’t who his brother was, it never had been. This was a display of power born of altruism of all things. The longer Rtar stayed pinned, the more his mind cleared.
He exhaled hard, fuming in anger, but his resistance ceased, and his brother released him. The two sons of ‘Sihar rose and dusted themselves off, the younger and smaller glaring into the eyes of the elder and larger.
“Rtar you must understand,-“ He hit Ronar in the stomach as hard as he could, and though his brother faltered and his mandibles flexed in surprised pain, the bastard did not fall. Rtar made no attempt to follow up, and Ronar did not move to retaliate.
“That was-“
“What you taught me. Remember?” Rtar cut Ronar’s rebuke off, calling back to his brother’s many lectures on the benefits of never truly giving up, even if forced to pretend. Ronar had no answer, only a scoff and a shake of his head.
“I do.” Ronar said, rubbing the spot where Rtar had struck tenderly. “But it does not change what must be.”
“He was our father, why must I stay behind? Do you not think me capable?” Rtar demanded.
“No, not yet.” Came the answer, harsh and stinging as it was. But his brother did not mince words, now or ever. “But you have already become a capable shipmaster and may well have the most natural talent as a flier in ‘Sihar history.”
Such praise he knew was not unearned, and from a famed ace such as Ronar, one who had rebuilt his shattered reputation at the helm of a Banshee, it meant even more. Still, it stung as Rtar bowed his head.
“You believe the demon will run?”
“I am certain he will try. But I will take him captive, and you shall be his executioner. Should he slip my grasp though, I need you to strike him from the skies.” The two brothers eyed one another, their gazes full of loss, pain, and mutual affection for the other. They called Ronar his half-brother, his lesser brother, and so much worse, but he’d never been any of those things.
“He boasted of killing Kanai, though.” Ronar’s features darkened at the mention of Rtar’s elder full-blooded brother. The two might as well have been hatchmates, with how close they’d been. They’d been together since they could walk, laughed together since they could speak, and fought together since the each of them had the strength to lift a sword. When Kanai had been slain, Ronar’s rage had blinded him so severely he’d struck a member of a minor prophet’s Honor Guard.
Only great penance had saved him, along with their father’s pleas. It’d cost him any chance at the title of Zealot and had him largely removed from ground combat. It was a great stain on his brother’s otherwise proud legacy. It also made Ronar question if he could truly find the strength to bring the demon in alive.
His brother’s silence made Rtar sure that his elder was unsure if he could either.
Then, purpose filled Ronar’s gaze, and Rtar saw in him a strength that he could only dream of one day matching.
“When you drive your blade into the demon’s rotted heart, I will have avenged both brother and father through my protecting you. It dies by your hand, for both of them.”
Rtar believed him.
-----
“There they are.” The words came out a quiet celebration, its whisper heard across the quiet, weightless confines of the Owl stealth dropship. They’d been up and down in shifts for three days waiting for the two ships to arrive. No comms, no artificial gravity, no life support, nothing. In silence they’d been patient, as all good hunters were, and finally that was rewarded.
The signal went out on a tight beam, in a single burst. One to the surface, one to the other dropship dormant in the storm of debris in Eirene’s orbit. Zarina’s pale faceplate stared out at the twin ships that’d been sent to stop them, to end their war before it started. One human, on alien, just like they’d expected. The Split-Jaws wanted retribution, their culture demanded it, and ONI wanted the problem solved before it could spread, both would be disappointed.
Pushing off the pilot’s seat, she floated back into the troop bay, and flashed her status light twice over their linked systems. Two greens, the time was now. Dim red emergency lights came to life and painted the sea of darkness in its glow. Every soul aboard bar herself wore the black battle armor of the ODSTs, regardless of what they had been before. The reinforced battle suit was a favorite of individual mercenaries, PMCs, rebels, and avengers alike much to the UNSC’s chagrin. The heads of her team moved to the Hellbringer in unison, faceplates of silver, blues, shades of green, and two dark red, all looked up at her.
“You all know the plan. We’ve got everything we need, all that’s left is to execute. It's time we make the xenos and the traitors answers for what they've done.” She felt the anticipation in her chest, rising as it always did before bloodshed whilst silent nods gave her all the affirmation she needed. There was no fear except dying without completing the mission, or her part of it at least. She had trusted Callum on the surface, and he had trusted her here, she was not going to lead him into second guessing his choices, not now. So she would succeed, they would all succeed. 
Or they’d burn the world down trying.
==Chapter 4==
Again, he ran over his inventory, spare magazines were spread across his person, and M6G sat magnetized onto his thigh, in his lap was the DMR, and secured above his seat was a stocky M180 Double Barrel Shotgun. The last piece was for the rogue, the rest of the arsenal was for just about everyone else.
“That you in there Elias?” He looked up, following the familiar voice to a man clad in the black fatigues of an Omen. His HUD populated, and naught but the man’s chosen callsign ‘DEKE’. 
“Baldwin?” Elias had stopped hoping to see familiar faces anymore, not that he saw the man’s face. 
“In the flesh.” An old friend answered. Six years they’d fought together, the war hadn’t been like those before it in recent centuries, there was no rotating home. Elias and Donald ‘Deke’ Baldwin had slugged it out with the Covenant day by day, month after month, year after year. Elias had gone to drop school, Deke hadn’t, to find him here, now, might’ve been the best thing to happen in a long time.
It’d been too long since he’d seen an old friend.
“Didn’t peg you for a spook, don’t they have rules about guys who talk too much?.” He answered, looking over the dark fatigues for some kind of marker of individuality, noting nothing beyond a pale blue stripe across the back of his white-domes helmet. The man shrugged, but Elias knew behind the helmet he was grinning as he sat himself down across from the Spartan.
“Didn’t peg you for a Spartan, don’t they have some sorta IQ requirement?” The faceless operator fired back, Elias’ own lips drawing taught beneath the silver faceplate of his own cerulean helmet. 
“Wow, you’ve somehow gotten even funnier.” Elias chuckled dryly, shaking his head.
“Yeah I know, don’t worry I got more.” More men filed past them, carbines and heavy battle rifles slung over their chests or cradled in their arms. They didn’t give a look to either of them, either dead silent or deep in conversation over private channels he didn’t know. Their callsigns registered on his HUD, and he filed them away for use when they touched down.
“So, you ever tangled with these Sunrise jokers before?” Deke took a look over his M6J carbine as Elias asked, the sleek gray weapon a sharp contrast to the bulky automatics Elias remembered his friend favoring. The Spartan shook his head in answer. Insurrectionists had been having a field day with recruitment since the war’s end, but an entire outfit of old special operators? Ones whose motives he found sympathetic, even if he found their methods horrific? That made him more nervous then he cared to admit.
“Yeah once or twice, they’re a special kind of nasty. Fight like us ‘cause they were us and all that, but they die like everyone else.” Deke Baldwin had been the kind of marine that threw himself between a pack of hungry Brutes and civilians without a second thought, and had once, if there had ever been someone Elias knew that valued all human life he’d have thought it was him. But there was something detached about the way his friend spoke that made him wonder how much of his friend was still beneath the mirrored faceplate of the helmet.
“They’ll use psych stuff where they can, try and make you question your place long enough to line a shot up. Real fond of exploiting gaps in ROE with regular guys too, we won't have that problem though will we?” He wanted to think Deke was throwing him a wry smile, something devilish glinting in his eyes. Elias knew he wasn’t though, it was all too cold. Not at all how his friend had once been. 
“You nervous, tangling with an older gen?” He was, but he didn’t say it. Callum-B042 was three years Elias’ junior, but when he’d been in school, B042 had been boots down on burning colonies. But it wasn’t the Spartan that gave him pause, no it was the others. Soldiers like Deke, like himself, men and women he’d fought and bled beside once.
Callum-B042 had never been meant to be a soldier, being one had broken him, but the rest of them had chosen to do this. It frightened Elias that he couldn’t entirely blame them.
“No.” He answered, the MJOLNIR obscuring whatever doubts lingered in his voice. “You?”
His old friend laughed and shook his head, and swept an open hand out to the nearly identical helmeted and seemingly silent cadre of elite soldiers they shared the Pelican’s troop bay with.
“I dunno, we nervous folks?” Every head turned towards Elias and Deke, the mirrored gaze of the visors centering on the silver of the Spartan’s own faceplate.
“No chance, sir!” Every voice answered answered as one. Deke thumped his chestplate twice with a closed fist, and the crew answered in kind. The air filled with the chorus of fist against steel in a display of fearlessness born out of trust in their abilities and one another. It was enough to get a rise in Elias too, he remembered similar rituals from before he’d been all he was, when he’d been only human.
For half a heartbeat he felt fully human again, and smiled beneath his helmet. He thumped his chest with them.
“Guess we better quit screwing around then.” Elias chuckled as the doors to the dropship began to close, sealing them in to a momentary darkness. All that remained now was the fight. 
----
“Contacts almost in range.” Callum looked over the shoulders of the drone operators, eyes flicking over the array of panels and displays spread about the, but in the end, he settled on the live feed from one of the trio of F-99 Wombats hidden in Eirene’s clouds. Modifications had been made to mask the drones from detection, but the specifics were beyond him, all he knew was Zarina vouched for the technician who’d made the mods, and there wasn’t much he didn’t trust her with.
Seemingly that faith hadn’t been misplaced either, none of the Pelicans or their alien escorts had showed any signs of alert, and their communications had been all but silent. Under the harsh lights of the command center, a smirk twisted at his pale, scarred face. The Wombat’s arced through clouds, afterburners burning hot as the pilots edged the throttle forwards.
“Priority targets?” The one Callum stood behind asked, the primary viewsparking marking the score of aircraft with yellow reticles. Impulse took him one way, rationality took him the other, but Callum recalled the lesson a drill instructor had beaten into a seven year old decades ago in another life. He had to trust his instincts.
“Phantoms first. Whatever the oonskies give us we can handle.” The slang was still strange on his tongue, and Callum caught the quick sideways glance that some of the new blood threw his way at his uttering it. Their lives had been the UNSC, her wars, her people. Making them into the enemy was harder for some than it was for others. His hands had shaken like leaves the first time he’d placed an M6 to a marine’s temple, and he’d not slept for days after he pulled the trigger. They weren’t just other targets, they were old friends, brothers and sisters who’d once stood back to back with them.
But that sentiment went both ways, and could be exploited, Zarina had taught him that. 
“Copy that.” Chirped the pilot in answer as Callum stepped away. “Good hunting, sir.”
“Try and save a few for the rest of us.” The Spartan answered, giving a half grin as he lifted his helmet from under his arm and slid it over his head. His HUD sprung to life, after-market software populating the interior of the domed faceplate. Callum whisked them away with a thought, and stepped back from the drone pilots as they loosed the first of their salvos into the descending enemy dropships.
Callum took the MA5B assault from his back, and beckoned the silent figures standing by the doorway to fall in behind him. They sported dark, heavy armor, faded shades of tan, brown, or olive. It was boxy stuff, meant for marine special forces on high risk operations. Balaclavas covered most of their faces, but some stared up at him with gleaming green rectangular eyepieces hanging over one eye, but not a soul of them blinked. They dropped in as he stepped out into the hall, a woman taking two great strides to place herself at the Spartan’s side, offering out a datapad to him.
“The guns live? This only works one way.” He asked, thumbing the release on his rifle, palming the magazine and inspecting it to be certain the special ‘Shredder’ rounds were what he was feeding the workhorse of a rifle. It was, but diligence was important. 
“The Scythe’s are up sir. They’re only gonna be able to set down one place, and we’ll be waiting for them there.” Callum felt a cool confidence rising as he set the rifle back on his back and took the offered device, issuing orders in rapid succession to the scores of fighters eagerly awaiting them. 
“Good, how’re the surprises looking?” Eirene had been his home once, but it had become all of theirs over the years, and even still there was no chance of them holding it. Time had done them favors though, and they knew it well enough to know where to leave little gifts for the powers that came for them. 
“All set. Armed, fed, ready to spring.” He nodded, looking away from the datapad to the woman herself. Her dark features were hidden by an inky black balaclava, only her eyes shone up at him, filled with purpose and pain in equal measure. Jaya Das was her name, Callum remembered it now. She’d been in a few skirmishes with Unggoy ‘settlers’ since joining up, but this would be her first time against another human being.
They were all too young to have fought their fellow man for the most part. The soldiers all around him, the Spartan himself, almost none of them could remember a time where the enemy they imagined for themselves was of the same species, much less former comrades.
“You were a Void Vulture, weren’t you?” The 36th Space Assault Battalion, the aforementioned Vultures, and Callum had a tumultuous history. When he’d first been sent into the field alone, he’d been paired with the special operations until to poor results. Callum had been lost without Beta Company, and ONI had left him in a place where he had little chance of being found. He remembered the unit’s name on Das’ dossier distinctly.
“Yessir.” She answered, a hint of pride colored by shame in the response. But she didn’t seem to recognize the connection. Too young, he supposed.
“Worried you’ll face one of your own out there?” He probed.
“The Sunrise is my own now, sir.” It was a good answer, but not the one he wanted.
“Don’t lie to me.” His tone darkened, and Callum could sense the tension rising in the surrounding soldiers, and saw the worry reach her eyes.
“I,-“ She started, looking back at her comrades for some kind of guidance that they didn’t have, then back to him. “I’m not lying, sir. This is the fight I’ve chosen, and they…”
“They didn’t. And that makes it hard. You trusted them more than anything, relied on them, and they couldn’t see reason even when it hung right in front of them. Maybe it was blind loyalty, maybe it was naïveté, or maybe they just needed the money. You don’t know, because you can’t imagine how they couldn’t see as clearly as you do.” It was all she could do to nod, and Callum lay a gauntleted hand on her shoulder as they came to a sudden stop amidst the chaos of the coming battle.
“You worry you aren’t going to be able to pull the trigger, but you will Jaya, I know you will. Know how?” They didn’t have room for doubts, not here, not now. She shook her head.
“Because we have to, for all the others who didn’t get here to make the choice. For our people. You’ll do it, and so will I when I come up against my old bunkmate today. It's you and I together.” She’d die in the first wave he was sure, but Callum needed her, even for just that long.
----
Mubiru saw black stars across his vision as his HUD blared alarms and screamed for him to check his vitals. All around him there were sputtering flames and twisted corpses, bodies broken in the harnesses meant to protect them after the Pelican dropship had been sent careening through a dilapidated skyscraper and onto the street below. One of the Phantoms had taken a bad hit from whatever the insurgents had flying for them, and his pilot had been a second too slow. Now the pilot was dead, as was nearly everyone else.
The Spartan pried his restraint off with ease and looked about the ruined troop bay for any positive vital signs. He found two, and one of them winked out the second Mubiru had laid eyes on him, succumbing to whatever injury he’d been dealt. The other’s status light burned orange, as the man let out a low groan.
The black-armored operative had twisted unnaturally in his harness, and Mubiru could tell without his HUD that a number of things were broken inside the man. Mubiru tried to think about how he’d move the man as he pulled the BR65 Battle Rifle from the rack he’d stowed it on. Outside he heard the hum of a Phantom, and the bark of plasma cannons all too quickly answered with gunfire. Some of Ronar’s group had made it after all, though Mubiru wasn’t sure if that would be good or bad in the end.
“Alright, stay with me.” Mubiru came to a crouch next to the broken operative, linking to the man’s BIOS and cross referencing to what extent he could treat his injuries with the Pelican’s medkit. It hadn’t occurred to him until then to look and see if that particular bit of the dropship had survived the landing, and a quick glance gave him his answer. It was not the one he’d been hoping for.
“Got a name?” He tried to be personable as he cut down the list of available treatments to the paltry tools stored in a container on his thigh.
“Trang.” The man grunted in response, feebly reaching up towards his helmet before a spasm of pain sent his arm back down to his side. Mubiru obliged him, and gingerly tugged the helmet free. Trang’s had a head of hair as black as jet cropped high and tight, his eyes were near as dark, and when the square-jawed, strong-featured man tried to speak again, he coughed blood through his clenched white teeth.
“Easy Trang. You got rocked pretty hard, the injuries are, -“
“Bad. They’re real bad. Trust me I feel it.” It was an admirable lie, but if Trang felt the extent of his injuries he wouldn’t have been cracking a red half-smile. Unless Mubiru could get him somewhere to stabilize him, then the best he could do was give him biofoam and a prayer. Suddenly the hull shook with a sudden, heavy impact, and in a flash Mubiru had snapped up his rifle in a single hand and drawn a bead on the source. There at the edge of the smoldering wreckage stood the Bastard of ‘Sihar, a plasma rifle in either hand. 
“Spartan, we must move, the longer we dawdle the-,” The azure armored Sangheili suddenly noticed that Trang was more than a corpse. “He lives?” The alien warrior inquired.
“Got a few more minutes, yeah.” Trang managed before coughing violently, red spittle splattering the silver-gray of Mubiru’s chestplate. Somehow Trang had drawn a Mk50 Sidekick in the instant Mubiru had turned away and leveled it with the Elite. It was an impressive feat given his condition, but the momentary burst of strength that left him just as quickly as it came, and the pistol fell to the ground as pain wracked his body.
“I will order my ship to hold. Spartan, if you can carry him I-,”
“Doesn’t your species spit on the injured, hinge head? Let me go with honor or whatever, do what we came to do.” The last of Trang’s words weren’t meant for Ronar, but the bastard was none the wiser. Mubiru knew the man was right, and he was far and away from the first he’d been forced to leave to die. If Ronar took offense to Trang’s outburst, it didn’t show. Instead, the Elite turned his eyes skyward, the distinct scream of a Banshee chased the sound of a roaring afterburner overhead.
“Time is fleeting Spartan, take your man to the Phantom, better he live to die another day.” They might’ve been the strangest words Mubiru could’ve imagined an Elite saying, but he wasn’t going to disagree.
“Fight another day.” The Spartan corrected, prying off Trang’s harness and laying his Battle Rifle across his back.
“Right, I am learning these human turns of phrase still. Apologies.” Ronar motioned for Mubiru to follow before stepping back out into the fray. Trang turned his gaze to the Spartan, and before he could protest the restraint had been torn away, and Mubiru jabbed him with an autoinjector that flooded his veins with a painkiller to keep him from screaming.
Mubiru picked Trang up as carefully as he could and made his way from the bay and into the light. He emerged into the corpse of a city. Skyscrapers had been reduced to their bones, some had crashed into one another or fallen onto the smaller buildings below, and in the distance, he could see where a great gash must’ve been torn into the surface. There were no buildings there, only dust, and those structures closest to the emptiness were blackened and slumping where they’d begun to melt. Hundreds of worlds had met the same end, his own included, all at the hands of the very beings that now braved oncoming gunfire to protect the man he carried.
Ronar was suppressing what must’ve been a machinegun nest, pouring twin torrents of plasma at the window where something heavy chattered in answer. All around him dust and rubble spat up, but Ronar and his fellows kept the heat on themselves as Mubiru broke for the Phantom idling above the carnage.
“I dun’ want ta owe one, to a hinge head.” Trang muttered as he hung limp in Mubiru’s arms. “You tell ‘im that. Don’t owe him nothin.” The painkillers were working fast, which was good given how sharply Trang would feel his wounds when they wore off, but he might live.
“I’ll pass it along.” Mubiru lied, standing beneath the Phantom and holding out the wounded man. It was a strangely gentle tug that lifted Trang from his arms and up into the alien dropship, different from his own ascents into ships of that model. Maybe it was different when one was trying to hijack it than being willingly taken aboard. He didn’t stop to think on it though, pivoting and drawing the rifle from his back.
“Wounded clear, let’s move.” It was only him and the sleek armored warriors of Sihar. The others had made it, Vargas and Gael both showed as up and in the green, and plenty of the other Omens had touched down as well, but here there was only him. He fell in beside a pair of Sangheilli and a gaggle of Unngoy hefting heavy weapons. Already Callum’s troops had drawn blood from their groundside forces, reports of well-coordinated ambushes and heavy casualties were already pouring in.
They were going to make them work for it.
----
“Third floor, fifth window from the right, hit it!” Gil stepped out from behind the crumpled wreckage of a long destroyed truck and the M247 GMPG in his arms sang loud and proud. A stream of molten lead ripped through metal, glass, and concrete as he swung the machinegun oft manned by crews of two as though it were a rifle. If he got any insurgents he didn’t see them go down, but Gil had only been drawing fire.
As the Sunrise fighter’s answered his barrage with their own Deke Baldwin emerged from the his own cover and loosed a round from the pump-action grenade launcher Elias had insisted the Omen could outshoot him with. The emplacement exploded in a shower of sparks and fragmentation, nothing moved inside it.
“Told you.” Elias quipped as he moved past him. Gil followed behind, the two Spartans spearheading the advance as they swept the ruins of Eriene’s capitol for the next ambush. Behind them a few dozen black-armored Omens followed, moving between chunks of cover. The landing had been hot, where the insurgents had gotten their hands on Wombat drones and Scythe anti-air cannons Vargas didn’t know, but he had some ideas. On the upside, he and Gael had made it to the LZ, which was more than they could say for Mubiru-B286.
The whole op stunk to high hell. From their orders that ran in opposition to the wishes of their alien allies, the ludicrously well equipped and well trained foe, he supposed it could have all been a coincidence, but Gil wasn’t a big believer in the phenomenon. Not when it came to ONI.
A rocket exploded behind him, a trio of the ONI enforcers going up in the fireball as they scrambled to counter. Vargas found the shooter before she could dip back into the building she’d emerged from, and a burst from the machinegun nearly cut her in two. A heavy round took him in the back, and he staggered as his shields broke. He knew the crack of that rifle, and he knew he had half a second before a second round punched into his back and went out his chest.
Gil ducked into an open door and a second shot rang out, a white trail of smoke hanging where he had stood the moment prior. Already Elias had his DMR up, and was loosing shots in answer to the assault. Gil righted himself and pivoted towards movement at the corner of his eye. Three figures outside the window, moving fast. His motion tracker pinged them on IFF as red a second after he’d depressed the trigger. The Spartan’s machinegun ripped through the interior of the building and back out onto the streets.
The barrage caught the first two in an instant, the third dropped back and narrowly escaped evisceration. 
“They’re gonna cut us apart in the streets!” Gil called over his shoulder letting off another burst as his last target tried to engage again. His shields sprung to life once more, and the drone of the alarm inside his helmet faded. 
“Not much else in terms of options Spartan, this is the only approach. Don’t worry, we’ll watch out for you.” Baldwin answered, oddly cheery for a man entering a building with bits of his comrades stuck to his fatigues. The operative leveled the grenade launcher and fired a shell into the pillar where the last of the trio had been hiding. Outside another rocket crashed into the streets, but instead of raining bits of meat it only sent up a shower of dust and debris as the operatives moved quickly into the building, Elias’ rifle cracking as he followed them in backwards.
“We should be able to move to the intersection through these buildings, it’ll keep us covered from that launcher.” The blue-armored Spartan suggested as he reloaded, tossing aside an empty magazine. Baldwin stood against a concrete pillar, hand to the side of his helmet, taking a moment before he realized both Spartans had shifted their gazes to him.
“Might work. CAS shouldn’t be long now, should help with that bastard with the rocke-,”
Gunfire punched through the windows that hadn’t been shattered by Gil’s salvo, and one of the Omen’s danced to the impacts of armor-piercing rounds across her body. “Shit.” Baldwin muttered, the operative dropping behind whatever cover the could find and returning fire with their carbines and heavy battle rifles. 
Two more went down, their helmets split by precision fire, and their comrades answered in kind, taking two of the insurgents when they tried to bound between cover. “Through the buildings it is then.” Baldwin racked the slide, ejecting a thick casing and chambering another explosive as another of the Omens tossed a smoke grenade to give them a better chance to move. Baldwin put a grenade into the insurgents too for good measure.
Gil stepped out and opened up, the machinegun roared as he blanketed the air with lead, Elias moving with the Omens in tow. Shoot and move, move and shoot, not much had changed since he’d gone under the knife after all, Gil was just taller now. Everyone else still died the same. Rounds thunked against his shields, but they held as he moved, a trio of the dark-armored Omens taking his role and laying down fire as he moved to them.
“Elias, how much ground does this thing cover?” Gil thumped one of the Omen’s shoulders to signal them to move, his M247’s heavy ammunition drum still half-full, but silent as he activated his helmet’s VISR. The building, like most built in the same century, was utterly massive. Had it been an office once? Apartments? Something else? It was impossible to say in its current state. 
“About a block, should get us close enough.” It would have to do, the Omens and their Spartan escorts continued to trade fire with the enemy, moving through the titanic structure as bullets went back and forth. Elias saw it first, but Gil heard it. The thunder, the rumble of metal over concrete, then he saw them. Gil threw himself over the two Omen’s closest to him, and the world exploded. 
He felt the shockwave in his bones, bits of debris rained down thumping against his armor as he rolled back upright, leaving the machinegun in the dirt as his hand went to his back and wrapped around a heavy cylinder. Gil saw it through the dust, a Cyclops exoskeleton, hefting a cannon in its hands like he might have slung about a gauss turret. The dimensions were familiar enough, even with their reconfiguration, the operator of the exoskeleton was wielding the same weapon the Scorpion Battle tanks used as their main tool of destruction, and it wasn’t alone.
Another Cyclops raced to the right of the first, this one wielding a cannon mounted to its forearm, perforating the building with explosive shells that took chunks out of support beams and splintered everything else. They’d gotten themselves snared, and it was going to cost them everything. Or, it would if they did nothing.
“Launcher, now!.” Gil thumbed the button at the top of the cylinder, a rod that pulsed yellow emerging from the device as the Spartan slung it forwards. The device hit the ground before them and blossomed into a dome of yellow hexagons, the next shell from the tank cannon hammering against it in the same instant. The fireball engulfhed the shield, but did not breach it. Wordlessly Baldwin threw Gil the grenade launcher, empty, but exchanging the empty box for a fresh one took but a few seconds.
“I’ll get the runner, you take the cannon?” Elias called out, and Gil answered with a quick thumbs up as the XM544 grenade launcher’s projection on his HUD changed from a red outline to blue, once again fully loaded. They both moved as blurs, through debris and gunfire, wolves closing on prey. Gil dove to his side as another shell detonated where he’d once stood, superhuman agility letting him clear the blast and use the shockwave to carry him forward.
He hit the ground rolled to his feet, and squeezed. The grenade exploded against the Cyclops, and as it shifted to fire again the Spartan was already gone. Gil hit it again, the machine jerking against the impact of the explosive, answering with a blast of its own, too slow. He sprinted through the gaping hole the war machine had left in the building, small arms fire impacting all around him, the crack of a sniper rifle cutting the air but finding only dust in place of the Spartan. 
Two men in retrofitted ODST battle armor tried to gun him down with a pair of machine guns, old belt-fed M642s. Before Gil could react, gunfire from his back cut them down, the Omens laying down cover now that the greatest threats were preoccupied. Gil was on it now, and the Cyclops swung the barrel of its cannon at him. He’d never been terribly graceful as a child, always prone to tripping and falling, but that had been another life.
Gilberto leapt and twisted, the length of the weapon going benath him and catching nothing but empty air. He closed, and the pilot released the cannon, swinging backhanded in a desperate gamble, but that missed too. Gil ducked low and leapt upwards, a hand catching on a lip of the Cyclops’ torso, and was it began to flail the Spartan’s legs found purchase. 
He shot up and away from the metal hand that made to grab him, found his footing, and lurched forwards. Gil’s shoulder cracked against the reinforced glass of the canopy, a spiderweb spreading from the epicenter in a heartbeat. The Cyclops twisted, inside he could see the pilot’s face gone white with fear, and as he swatted at the Spartan, Gil kicked off, thrusters flaring, stabilizing, then roaring. Gil rocketed through the Cyclops’ canopy metal and glass twisting as the pilot broke beneath the supersoldier turned wrecking ball.
Blood and viscera painted him as he jerked himself free of the shattered ribs and spine of the pilot. A voiceless scream had been on the man’s face before Gil had caved him in, and blood ran from his open mouth. For a moment he wondered who the enemy might’ve been. What battles had he fought for humanity before it all ended like this? Would there be anyone left to mourn him? Or was he doing this because there was no one left to?
A burst of gunfire broke his shields as the Cyclops staggered and began to fall. Gil dove to the ground, rolling away from the exoskeleton as it collapsed onto the street in a cloud of dust and ash. Pavement splintered around him as whoever was shooting let out a anguished scream that suddenly cut short. The whine of a Banshee cut through the air, and the sound of plasma cannons drowned out the vengeful scream, and killed the screamer for good measure. 
The flyers were blue instead of the typical purple, Sihar’s fighters having seemingly triumphed over the pair of Wombats in the end. There were only two though, where once there had been almost twenty. The two fighters streaked through the air of the dead city, strafing the insurgents bold enough to stand against them. Gil was, for the first time in his life, so very glad to see a Banshee.
Then one exploded as a rocket slammed into its side, spiraling out to one side and crashing into an already unstable building several blocks away, bringing it down in a terrible cacophony. There was nothing to be done for it, they had to keep moving.
“Elias?” He called over the COM, an unsettling quiet falling over the street as he turned to where he’d last seen his fellow Spartan. He had to be alright, he had to be. Gil would soldier on, but he didn’t want to face it alone. The other Spartan’s vitals showed as green, but technology could fail, even if it was unlikely. Gil pulled himself back up to his feet, eyes tracking the marks over the surviving Omens and on Elias, the latter remaining eerily still.
“You get yours yet?” Came the answer, and Gil laughed as he moved to meet Baldwin. One of the Omens was hauling his M247 on his shoulder, and was all too happy to have Gil relieve him of it as the Spartan handed the launcher back to the acting head of the ONI operatives. Salvatore Romano and the rest of the human strike force had landed hard almost a kilometer away, and were closing fast, but until then Elias’ friend held the command.
Elias trotted through the lingering haze, his armor blackened where Gil’s had taken on an grim red tinge. The Spartan looked his comrade over once and shrugged. “Not the way I’d have done it.” He tutted.
Gil looked the man dead in his silver faceplate, and tilted his head in answer, giving a wave to his scorched armor as his only rebuke. The Sapien Sunrise fighters that had survived the quick strafing run of the Banshee pair had pulled back, leaving the dead street still and silent but for the sounds of distant fighting.Gil checked the TACMAP, and took note Mubiru and the Elites closing on their position, Romano and the others not far behind.
It should’ve been a relief, but Gil saw the shift in Baldwin’s stature as his hand shot up to his helmet as it had before. For the hour he’d known the operative, he hadn’t struck Gil as the type to panic, and yet his body language screamed the opposite. Elias took note next, shifting his gaze to his friend.
“I Am Your Father just went dark.” Baldwin stated with utter disbelief. Gil didn’t fret, it was nothing more than a communications error, nothing more. “Last I got said they were being boarded.”
Then his stomach sank, and Gil wondered how he could’ve been so naive. 
----