Halo: Mortal Reveries

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==Chapter 1: Vargas==
UNSC Infinity, Day 1, 6 Hours Before Contact
“Dak, tell me I’m headin’ in the right direction." Gilberto Vargas asked the datapad in his hand as he walked the halls of Infinity’s Spartan Barracks, olive drab duffel bag slung over his other shoulder. An icon at the top of the pad winked as his AI processed the query faster than he could’ve hoped to perceive before projecting a hologram of itself out from the corner of the device. A blue hexagon with two black circles for eyes and a thin rectangle for a mouth started up at him with a look that Vargas swore was frustration in spite of the impossibility of it.
“Spartan Vargas, unfortunately, it seems the route to Fireteam Anchor’s quarters required you to take the last right. Do you need me to provide active guidance?” The AI questioned with the slightest hint of a Hispanic accent. It reminded him of his uncle, though that man’s efforts to keep Vargas in check had been about as effective as Dak’s. 
“I’m alright, thanks Dee.” The AI winked away, and Vargas was sure its code was bristling at his use of an unapproved nickname. The little bot would come around, he was sure. Pivoting on his heel Vargas backtracked and rounded the corner to put himself back on track. It was a hell of a time to be a replacement, but he counted himself lucky that he at least wouldn’t be the only new face on Anchor’s roster.
The halls of the barracks weren’t empty, but for every face he recognized he could recall two more that were missing. This fight with Cortana had been eating away at their ranks, and not even just through outright casualties, there had been scores of people they’d had to leave behind when a Guardian emerged in-system. Vargas told himself that was better, it at least meant there was a chance they’d find their way home.
The Spartan caught sight of a familiar face heading his way, too engrossed with something on his own datapad to take notice of Vargas. “Shouldn’t you be catchin’ some sleep flyboy? Need you sharp.” He called out to Henri Malik, Fireteam Windfall’s number four looking up and meeting his gaze with an easy smile. The blonde-haired and gray-eyed Spartan was always in a good mood it seemed, even when things seemed dire.
“We’re t-minus six hours Gil, I’ve already got all the sleep I need to bail you out when you get yourself in too deep.” The Spartan Aviator jabbed back, grinning as he tucked his pad away and crossed the hallway to Vargas, and offered out a hand. He took it and shook it, and the two Spartans laughed.
“Requiem was three years ago Herni, I think you can let that one go,” Vargas said with a tilt of his head.
“Oh not a chance,” Malik answered. “Not until you get me that steak dinner you promised.”
Fireteam Windfall had saved his and the rest of Fireteam Lightning’s collective asses in 2557 after the Infinity had crash-landed inside the massive Shield World called Requiem. Amidst the chaos of the battle with the Storm Covenant, the Promethean’s debut, and the calamity of the Master Chief and Cortana’s return from the dead, Lighting had been cut off in a bad way. 
They’d been trying to rescue the survivors of a marine company that’d set out on recon, but none of them had accounted for enemies that could teleport and suddenly surround you, or that the metal freaks would’ve been working with the Storm Covenant. When alien aircraft and armor fell in to support the Promethean Knights that’d fallen upon them Vargas had been sure they were done for.
Then Windfall had cut through the clouds in their F-41 Broadswords, and the rest was history. Vargas might’ve made a few promises he didn’t end up being able to keep, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried.
“When I find steak you’ll be the first to know. Where’re you heading?” Vargas noticed Malik was in his techsuit rather than something a little more breathable. They were approaching Zeta Halo fast to be sure, but Malik and the other aviators typically didn’t suit up until t-minus three hours.
“Gonna run some sims, can’t ever be too prepared for Phaetons. What about you, they got you assigned to a new team?” The question had been expected, but it was still unpleasant when he heard it outbound. It was barely even an assignment, he was just filling a slot temporarily, the Lightning was missing, not dead.
“Yeah, Palmer put me with Anchor for this rodeo.” He gave a small shrug.
“Oh, Samara’s team? They’re good people, good Spartans too.” Malik assured him with a quick nod.
“So I’ve heard, I know Colombo, we both jumped with the 11th Shock back in the war so I knew she had to run a good crew.” It was strange that even with the galaxy ripped apart by the Created’s AI uprising that the conflict that ended almost eight years prior was still ‘the war’. At the same time, Vargas didn’t find it strange at all, Cortana had a lot more work to do before she could rival the Human-Covenant War for impact and significance.
“Good, she might know how to handle you if she’s had time with your type.” Malik and Vargas both chuckled, and shook their heads before giving a pair of exasperated sighs. Vargas was worried about Anchor’s two remaining members more than anything, where Lightning had hope, there was no mistaking what had become of Spartan Chuol and Baker. 
“Who else is taking a slot?” Malik followed up with the question of the hour. Vargas had a name for the other replacement but not much else, most of her file beyond her name, and a few after-action reports were redacted way beyond his clearance level.
“A Spartan Kazlow apparently, know her?” Vargas asked with a raised brow, sighing defeatedly when Malik shook his head no. “Spartan-G189?” He tried again, wondering if the change in designation might stir the aviator’s memory, but again to no avail.
“They’re sticking a Three with you?” Malik seemed as surprised as Vargas had been, command typically kept the generations to themselves, it wasn’t unheard of to have a mixed unit but it wasn’t common either. Vargas just shrugged, if the kid was half as capable as her file made her out to be then they’d get along just fine.
“Gil, I-uh, I never got to say sorry.” Malik began down the apologetic road, and Vargas had to stomach the frustrations in the name of being polite. They weren’t dead. There was every chance that Gael, Balodis, and Shamir were still fighting tooth and nail on the surface of Terceria, or at worst were stuck in some Created re-education camp. If they were, he’d get them out when this was all done. He owed them that much for leaving them behind.
It wasn’t like that according to just about everyone else, Vargas had been wounded, medevac’d well before the firefight that dragged on too long and forced Infinity to leave the rest of Lightning behind. That didn’t change how he saw it though, didn’t change that he should’ve been there by their sides.
“Thanks Henri.” Vargas remembered his manners and nodded to assure his fellow Spartan he could still hack it. Malik clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a nod before continuing on down the hall. 
“When this is all over, swing by our place, Mako’s got a bottle of vintage Arcadian that’s just been waiting for the right occasion to be opened up.” The pilot called back, and Vargas looked back at him and flashed a thumbs up.
“Mean it?” Vargas asked.
“Sure, just don’t forget the steak you cheap bastard.” Malik laughed and Vargas shook his head with a smile, waving the other Spartan away and trudging along through the long, gray hall. He eyed the doors he passed by, looked over the names plastered above them, and felt a twinge each time he passed a room he knew was empty. Avalanche, Ox, Comet, Hurricane, Stallion, it went on and on and on. They weren’t all dead he knew, so had been reassigned, others stranded, but too many were. Then there was Anchor, and he wasn’t the first one to make it to the door.
She was short for a Spartan, her black hair tied back in a bun while her deep blue eyes stared aimlessly down the hall. She was keeping her weight on her right leg, which at some point underneath the gray utility pants ceased being flesh and bone and became metal, the gray prosthetic leg largely unremarkable when compared to her left hand. Prosthetic as well, it was a beaten crimson in contrast to her leg’s gray.
She looked so young, too damned young. 
“Spartan Kazlow?” Vargas offered a kind smile. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to call her, but assuming she’d want to be on a first-name basis felt nearly as risky as addressing her by a number.
She stared at him blankly for a moment longer than was comfortable, and Vargas wondered if he would’ve been better off not saying anything at all. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to process it, trying to think of what to say. She was so damned young, too damned young, by the time she began to speak Vargas had already decided there was no way in hell she was only a few years his junior at 26.
“Bless is my na,-uh, just Bless is fine.” Even as she stammered the words they came out cold, so matter-of-fact that she might’ve been offended he hadn’t gotten it right on the first try. Vargas rolled with the punches like always.
“Well then ‘just Bless’, I’m Gil. Looks like we’re the replacements.” He tried breaking the awkwardness and offered out a hand, that the SPARTAN-III looked down at with suspicion before taking it, metal clasping over skin. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t scowl. It’d work. They shook and her hand fell away, leaving the two to stand in silence. 
“Shall we?” He inclined his head towards the sealed door that separated them from Fireteam Anchor’s living quarters, and the other Spartan simply gave a nod of her head. Vargas didn’t expect he’d be getting much more and pressed mashed the access button, the metal alloy door sliding sideways and granting them entrance.
“About time, I was beginning to think I’d need to come and pull you both in.” Spoke a woman’s familiar voice, one he’d not expected to find in Anchor’s quarters. Clad in full Mark VII MJOLNIR that sported the same gray and orange color scheme their RECRUIT-pattern armor once had that Spartan mission handlers had adopted as uniform, was Gerlind Wetzel. She stared down at Bless and Vargas both as they crossed the threshold into the room and shut the door behind them.
She ran ops for more teams now than she had ever been meant to, but as more and more handlers were cycled into combat teams, and as her successive requests to be rotated in such a fashion were denied, it was to be expected. In truth, Vargas should’ve known he’d be staying under Wetzel’s command in the end. She crossed her arms over her armored chest and stepped back so that the two replacements could get a better idea of the room.
It was no different from any other Spartan rack. Two neatly made heavy bunk beds, a few lockers, a pair of parallel overhead lights, and whatever items its inhabitants had left around to make a home of the place. Hadrian Colombo sat on the top of one of the bunks, the dark-skinned with shorty wiry hair giving Vargas a subtle nod as he entered, whilst Iliana Samaras stood next to Wetzel with her arms crossed. A pale woman with buzzed hair and a powerful frame, she wore a sleeveless white top that exposed the interwoven tattoos that began at her right wrist and ran up to her collarbone. She gave her two new Spartans a polite smile and nod.
“Bless, Vargas, good to have you.” Samaras gave them both a nod. “Wetzel was stopping by to give us our orders, apparently we’re on special assignment.” 
“Yippee,” Colombo added dryly, and Vargas scoffed.
“Oh? Let’s hear it then.” He looked to the armored Spartan expectantly, watching Bless turn to her as well out of the corner of his eye. Wetzel met his gaze from behind the silver-blue of her faceplate, her body language shifting ever so slightly in a manner that suggested annoyance. She’d been waiting on the two of them to get there, rushing her might not have been his brightest idea.
“Fireteam Anchor, you will be inserted separately from the main force. Zeta Halo was home to three ONI research facilities prior to Cortana’s arrival. Two were auxiliaries and of little concern, the primary facility, however, is. Recon drones picked up what appears to have been an active signal from someone ground-side being routed through it.” From the start, it sounded like they were being sent into a trap, and with every word that followed Vargas felt more and more sure of it.
“This signal, upon decryption, seems to be stating that they have information of extreme importance, secure whatever this intel is, and if possible extract whatever survivors may still be present.” Wetzel didn’t ask if they had questions, but she must’ve known they were going to ask anyway.
“Wouldn’t Cortana have been able to decrypt whatever signal she sent? She had access to pretty much all of our encryptions and has been breaking new ones consistently.” Samaras struck first.
“Makes sense since she wrote half of them.” Colombo chimed in.
“This was a new encryption, entirely different from those in active use. Seems to have been written by whoever sent the signal.” Wetzel’s answer was about as unsatisfactory as it could’ve possibly been, and Vargas stopped just short of a full frown.
“So we don’t even know for sure if we’re reading it right?” Colombo put the question forward before he could.
“The analysts have 85% confidence in their decryption. Even if Cortana cracked it and got the same message, whatever action she’s taken to address may not be fast enough. She’ll be too busy getting erased to stop your efforts.” Bless scoffed quietly, and Vargas let out a small huff in agreement. Eighty-five percent was not enough to stake a Spartan team on, not in the midst of such a crucial operation. But no doubt the orders she was giving them now came from above Wetzel, and she was powerless to change them.
“You’ll be dropping with the first group too, best get to the armor deck now before it gets crowded.” Wetzel added as she moved past Bless and Vargas and stepped out of the room without another word, leaving no room for argument. 
For a moment the four Spartans looked at one another, confusion and frustration written across their faces, but none of them said a word. Bless hid it the best he noticed, the young Spartan’s expression was at worst one of slight annoyance, rather than the outright exasperation that Colombo now wore. Vargas had been hoping for a chance to catch up with his old friend, to get acquainted with his new team leader, but those were luxuries they couldn’t afford now.
With a sigh he unslung his duffle, and tossed the bag onto the bed below Colombo, looking up at the other Spartan with a shrug. “You don’t snore anymore do you?” He asked with a grin, breaking the frustrated silence, and though Colombo scoffed and threw up his hands, Samaras let out a chuckle that told Vargas all he needed to know. He’d chosen the wrong bed.
“We’ll get familiar on the deck then. Let’s get moving.” Samaras put her hands on her hips and shook her head. Minimal intelligence, an almost too obvious trap, and an objective that’s value was only known to some spook several security clearances above them? It was a Spartan mission alright.
==Chapter 2: Moradi==
Zeta Halo, Day 1, 1 Hour Before Contact
The pair of Banshees howled through the air, letting out their terrible scream as they fell upon the humans scrambling through the stone outcroppings of the mountain. Red plasma bolts rained down, kicking up dirt and melting stone as they pair strafed the fleeing humans once again. Two men went down in the stream of plasma fire and Spartan Leyla Moradi muttered a quiet curse from her perch. The fliers just had to come a little closer, they were nearly in range now and she owed it to whoever they’d just lost to not risk missing her shot on account of her emotions. 
She tried not thinking about who it might’ve been, kept herself from wondering what comrades that had endured a year of torment on this ring had just been snuffed out by the ring’s newest residents. Cortana had always had the capability to find them, to eradicate them, but she never bothered. She kept them away from her activities, and sent a few Promethean patrols after them now and again, but to her, they were little more than a nuisance. To the Banished they were sport.
Whatever they were after, whatever their conflict with Cortana was, Leyla didn’t know, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was they had killed more of her band of holdouts in the past weeks than Cortana had in a year, and she was going to do everything in her power to undermine their every action until they finally killed her. 
Though she could not feel it encased inside her second-generation MJOLNIR armor, she heard the wind blow harshly around her. She lay prone at the mouth of a divot in the mountainside far too small to be called a cave, light snowfall dusting the dark stone and the harsh edges of the crude Brute ‘Skewer’ in her arms. Her body was draped with a reactive camouflage cloak as she lay perfectly still, a hunter waiting to strike. The Banshees came back around, contrails sweeping behind their slanted double-wings as they lined themselves up with the fleeing humans once again. Leyla finally moved, subtly shifting to track the aircraft on the left.
She waited, drew in a breath, held it, and flicked her acknowledgment light green as the reticle on her heads-up display turned red. Her light was answered with another green and she squeezed the trigger without a second’s hesitation. Her Skewer thunked, shunting out a meter-long projectile in an arc through the falling snow and crashed through the canopy of the Banshee. In the same instant, another rod of metal speared into her victim’s wingman, and both aircraft began to belch smoke and fall away. She followed the path of her target, watching as the Banshee listed to the side and began to tumble before it slammed down against the mountainside in an explosion of metal and flame. The other craft suffered the same fate, though the subsequent explosion was more distant.
“Good shooting Spartans, but we’re not out of the woods yet!” A voice crackled over their group’s channel, Chief Petty Officer Pawel Baran. It gave her some comfort to know he wasn’t among the dead, but it only amplified the suppressed feelings of worry for the others. She scanned the skyline, and before she could do it, the flight of four Phantoms on closing in had been marked. He’d make some joke about her getting slow later for that, but Leyla was more concerned about surviving to that point than she was Spartan Rakesh Samad’s teasing. 
“Copy, we see ‘em Baran, keep moving back to base, you know what to do,” Rakesh answered as Leyla took one of the rods of Skewer ammunition from the magnetized plate on her back and fed it into the weapon. They’d prepared for this, run through what to do hundreds of times, but the moment was finally here. The Banished were going to try and snuff them out entirely. Perhaps the game had gotten stale with all their efforts at hunting them had backfired in humiliating fashion.
“Moving, need better cover if we’re gonna do this right.” She said to Rakesh over their private channel. The camouflage of the cloak shifted and changed as she moved, trying to adapt as she tied it firmly into place around her shoulders. Rakesh winked his acknowledgment light in response, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw him begin to move as well. |||As the others ascended the mountain towards their refuge, moving away from the danger, the pair of Spartans advanced towards it.
Quickly and quietly they weaved through the outcroppings that jutted out from the mountainside, armored boots almost silent as they crunched against freshly fallen snow. The Phantoms came in closer by the second, squat Unngoy gunners in red carapaces sweeping over the terrain from behind their plasma turrets, hoping desperately that they’d not encounter whatever had just downed the two Banshees. Their quiet prayers would be answered as the dropships disembarked the troops they carried and flew away without issue, ignorant of the two ‘demons’ creeping into position.
It was a lot of Banished, Leyla counted a Hunter pair and eight Brutes of varying ranks with a few dozen lighter infantry. Only one really stood it out, clad in black and red armor was an Elite more massive than any she’d ever seen. It carried itself more like a Brute, commanded its Jiralhanae underlings with the ferocity of a Chieftain, and roared his might in the manner. In truth, only the gleaming Energy Sword it wielded in tandem with a Plasma Repeater spoke to its actual culture.
The Spartan pressed against the back of a smooth outcropping, eyes flicking over the available ammunition and charge in each of her weapons as it was displayed on her HUD. Leyla knew not to trust technology entirely, especially in light of last year’s events, but she needed to keep her movement to a minimum. The Banished had been after them since they’d arrived, but this mountain had been their home far longer than the aliens had been on the ring, they had been preparing for this exact situation for some time.
Grunts and a pair of lower-ranking Brutes led the assault element up the hill, trekking up the mountainside without the care to follow a specific path as their desired prey had. Anticipation gripped her chest, and a small smile creased her lips. The first explosion was not a massive one, the crack of well-placed M9 Fragmentation grenades was quickly swallowed up by stone. Loose stones and a grouping of boulders rumbled and fell, tumbling down onto the forward element of the Banished troops. The grunts squealed and the Brutes roared, but by the time they had turned to run the miniature avalanche had swallowed them. 
The rest of the aliens had scrambled out of the path, a pair of Jackals running right onto another trap and failing to even let out a final squawk as the buried explosives enveloped them in fire and fragmentation. The Elite barked orders, and the Brutes echoed them, corralling their lessers back into formation as they sniffed the air. If they were Covenant troops, they’d have kept pushing and had the numbers to roll on and on forever, but Banished fought smarter than that.
The Hunters stepped in front of the Elite and his Brutes, shields raised and cutting off any shot Leyla had at the alien, then a pair of Jackals wearing frilled armor darted out lightning fast up the hill. They weaved through the rocks, retracing the steps of the humans at a blistering pace, and Leyla knew if they went any farther the ruse would be up. 
“Got left.” She transmitted, shifting her Skewer so that the faint blue reticle sat a hair in front of the sprinting Jackal. Rakesh flicked a green status light, and she let the sprinting alien rush right into the red and then squeezed. The rod punched through the Jackal’s chest, violently tearing it sideways and pinning its limp body against a rock face that was painted in the alien’s blood and viscera. Rakesh’s shot took his Jackal in the throat, the savage force of the weapon tearing its head from its shoulders.
Instantly the aliens opened fire, streams of plasma and Blamite racing upwards and burning into the mountainside, but they found no Spartans. Leyla was already moving back, and by the time a sharp-eyed Jackal had caught her moving, its shots were too late to catch her as she dropped behind another outcropping. She looked to her side and found Rakesh mirroring her, a dark red blur rushing down the mountainside, like blood through the snow. He turned and dropped into a crouch under fire, plasma bolts flaring his shields, and fired the skewer. Something died, and he dove for cover as a stream of plasma from one of the Hunters raked his position. The big ones would have to go next.
No sooner had she thought of the hulking aliens as the other sent a blast from a heavy fuel rod into her position. The green ball of superheated energy slammed into the stones with enough concussive force to rattle her teeth and burned hot enough that she felt the sting. The rocks she hid behind were beginning to droop as they melted, and again Leyla moved.
Gobs of red plasma arced over her, splashing against stone and turning the snow to steam, a few stray needles clipped her shields, but she kept moving. Leyla pivoted as she again found cover, dropping into a roll as another blast from a fuel rod impacted behind her. She came up, bringing the Skewer with her, and fired. The rod soared through the air and caught the Hunter focused on Rakesh in the bundle of worms that made up its neck. Orange blood sprayed into the crisp air, but besides a low groan of pain, all she did was call the other Hunter’s attention to her as well. Just like she’d wanted. 
Rakesh fired again, and a Brute howled in mortal agony, seconds after another grunt triggered a trap, likely having waddled too far off the set path in a state of panic, and more explosions ripped into the Banished troops. She shoved the last metal rod into the Brute weapon and kept moving.
“Out on the Skewer, meet me in the middle?” It was her turn to answer with only the flash of a green acknowledgment light. Leyla broke from cover and dropped into a slide, swinging the Skewer around to fire off the last shot into the glowing arm of one of the Hunters. She’d hoped it would’ve still tried to fire like she’d seen them do in the war, but as she kept sprinting, there was no explosion. It must’ve known better, but she didn’t bother looking to see.
The ground behind and in front of her exploded, spraying stone and snow as a Brute Shot loosed its fury at her alongside a dozen other alien weapons. Her shields flared as she tossed away the empty Skewer in her hands, but they held as she sprinted behind the next outcropping.
Rakesh was already waiting, tossing her one of the Banished Manglers to pair with the Plasma Rifle on her thigh. She caught it and brought the red-hued Plasma Rifle up from the magnetized plate on her left thigh as well. “Ready?” She asked as a storm of pink Blamite cut into the ground, curving past the edge of their cover only to fall just short.
“Born ready, let’s cook these bastards.” Rakesh brandished a Brute Shot of his own, as well as a nasty-looking Needler on his thigh with distinctly blue crystals jutting out from it. They gave one another a nod, the motion so subtle only a Spartan would’ve seen it, and then moved. Both their heads-up displays marked the dozen or so remaining traps on the path up the mountainside, and the small map in the bottom corner highlighted the advancing Banished as a cluster of red dots just in case they’d somehow missed them. 
The Hunters were in the lead, the one whose arm cannon didn’t have a meter-long length of metal jutting out from it was readying to fire as it ran. The mass of creatures stomped just next to one of the hidden explosives, and without missing a beat Rakesh’s blasted the Brute Shot into the waiting trap. The Hunter stepped past the cluster of buried grenades only for them to explode at its back, fire and shards of metal tearing apart the exposed words in a storm of orange gore.
It let out a low moaning sound and died. Its bond brother, utterly enraged, then broke from the Banished ranks to charge after Rakesh. Its Sangheili commander roared after it but it was too late. A pair of grunts caught the first burst of plasma, a jackal too slow to ready its shield felt nothing as the Mangler lodged a slug in one end of its head and out the other, taking brain and bone with it as the avian crumpled. 
A Brute clad in red and black, wearing the winged helmet of a major rushed forward, Brute Shot thundering in its massive arms as two lesser Jiralhane followed after it. Leyla twisted and dove, whirling away from the explosive impacts, dropping into a roll, and coming out of it shooting. Plasma bathed the Major’s shields until they flared and broke, and Leyla pumped a pair of rounds through the alien’s throat. Even as gouts of blood sprayed from the mortal wounds, the Brute kept coming.
Screaming a wild death howl, the Brute slogged through a barrage of plasma that melted away armor, flesh, and bone to slam into Leyla. It was like being run over by a Warthog, the tremendous alien ramming her against the outcropping she’d hidden behind moments earlier. Her shields popped and her ears rang, but she couldn’t afford to be stunned. She brought one foot up against the stone and kicked off hard, pressing the Mangler in between the gaps of the Brute’s armor and firing until it went limp.
No sooner had she thrown it off of her than the other two fell onto her. The first let off a burst from its Spiker, superheated metal punching into her chest plate. The few extra millimeters of up-armor on the NIGHTFALL-class MJOLNIR stopped the projectiles short of burrowing all the way through her techsuit, but her world still became filled with needle-sharp pain. Leyla ducked and turned, the second Brute’s aggressive swipe with its own Spiker biting deep into her plating over her shoulder rather than into her neck as a result.
She jerked away, giving herself the smallest amount of clearance, then shot back towards the Brutes. Again the closer one rushed her instead of firing, bellowing curses in its alien tongue alongside promises to tear her to pieces. It lunged out, trying to grab her by the head with its massive paw, and Leyla dropped under with ease, taking the now empty Mangler in her off-hand and slamming both of its blades through the back of the Brute’s leg. It howled in pain as she dashed to the side as the other Brute filled the space where she’d been and the corpse of their superior with another barrage of spikes.
The more cautious of the two Brutes tried to backpedal and line up another shot on her, but it was too late. Her plasma rifle spat a barrage into the Brute, which in turn leaped at her with desperate fury. Her reflexes made the blows come slowly, an overhead slash that she sidestepped, a vicious uppercut that she backed away from, and a final desperate lunge as it attempted to tackle her that she spun away from. The alien missed her and crashed into the snow as its comrade threw itself towards her, clutching at its leg and still roaring.
It caught the side of her helmet, a hammer blow that sent her spinning. Leyla saw stars and felt the Plasma Rifle leave her grasp. The Spartan slammed into the ground, careful to make sure she landed on her back and didn’t give the spikes lodged in her chestplate the extra push they needed to puncture her ribcage. Leyla didn’t panic, her head remained cool even as she fought to blink away the pain in her eyes. Her hand went down to her right thigh and pulled the nickel-finish M6H Magnum from the holster strapped over her armor. 
The Brute staggered towards her, and she squeezed thrice, the pistol punching three explosive rounds through the alien’s good leg. It fell forward screaming, trying to grab for her, but she brought the tip of her boot against the side of its jaw hard enough to tear it from the hinges. The roar of rage and agony became a gurgled mess, the pain cutting through even the Brute’s adrenaline-fueled rage. She pivoted, setting the iron sights of her Magnum over the Brute that had tried to tackle her as it again rose up, and squeezed.
Its head jerked to the side, spraying pink and crimson as it collapsed. The last Brute let out a sound more whimper than roar, but before it could manage a final defiant blow on her she’d snapped back to it, and fired again. Alarms in her helmet sang as her shields took their sweet time regenerating, and a trio of red dots closed on her yellow one on the HUD’s map. 
Leyla found her way up to a knee in time to put two into the first of the three, a Jackal, as soon as it came into view. She snapped to the next and realized she was empty. Another of the Jackals, wearing feathered armor like the others before and brandishing a shield gauntlet on either forearm and a Mauler held with both hands trained on her. There was a grunt too, waddling after it with a Plasma Pistol, but if the Jackal let the shotgun-like weapon rip a hole in her the squat alien wasn’t going to be a concern anyway.
She rushed to reload, wincing as she realized one of the spikes had gone deeper than she imagined, and realizing that the millisecond the pain had cost her was going to be fatal. Then a silver-blue beam punched through the Jackal’s head from higher up the mountain, and the bird collapsed, purple ichor staining the white snow. The Grunt squealed but was cut off halfway through as another shot from a beam rifle cut it down.
Leyla looked up, and her helmet tagged Pawel Baran nestled in a sniper’s nest of his own. Of the survivors, Pawel was the only combat personnel barring the two Spartans, a hardened Army veteran who’d taken the assignment to Installation 07 for the pay bump that would help put his twin daughters through school. So many times Leyla had wished he had never been there, that he’d been with his family, but now she couldn’t have been happier he was.
She slammed a new magazine into her M6 and threw Pawel a thumbs up that he’d never see, his rifle cracking again and again into the remaining Banished. Leyla looked for Rakesh, finding him standing atop the fallen Hunter, Brute Shot ripping apart a pair of Jackals trying to hide behind her shields.
The ripple was hard to notice from this far away, and it hadn’t been what she’d have expected of an Elite that had carried itself as it had, but Leyla knew it was no mistake, and that she wasn’t going to be fast enough.
“Rakesh on your six!” She boomed, her Magnum howling as she put rounds into the spectral shimmer. Its shields flared, and the active camouflage fell away, but as Rakesh turned it was already too late. The Elite lunged and cut from hip to the opposite shoulder in a single swipe.
No. Her mind was screaming as she fired. No, no, no!
Its shields popped, but the Elite had snaked behind cover just as Pawel took a shot at it, the beam carving into the stone harmlessly. Leyla ran for her teammate, for her friend, her stomach twisting into knots as she sprinted. They’d lost TEAMBIO along with long-range communications and the rest when Cortana arrived, but the way Rakesh was not moving said all she needed to know. But Leyla wasn’t listening.
“Spartan Moradi, the splitjaw is slinking off down the mountain, get Spartan Samad, and let's go we’ve got more incoming!” Leyla dropped into a kneel next to Rakesh, holstering the Magnum and shaking him as she tried to assess the damage. He barely groaned in response. The wound was deep, and moving him would be hard but as she looked out and saw the Seraph bombers coming in from the distance, she knew she had no choice.
It was what she saw beyond them, out in the stars, that made her freeze.
“Leyla, g-go…” Rakesh managed weakly, agony thick in his voice, but she was not looking at him.
“No…no we warned them, we told them not to co-, fuck! Fuck!” Leyla screamed, Rakesh slowly turned his head to see what she did. 
“Spartans, you need to move, now! We have to-, Oh God, oh no.” Pawel’s voice carried off, defeat in every syllable. They’d lost so many people, sacrificed so many lives, and fought so hard, just to avoid this very moment. Leyla felt Rakesh grip her hand as if to beg for some kind of reassurance that what they were seeing was only some awful dying delusion.
But it wasn’t.
In spite of their attempts to send a warning, the UNSC Infinity and her escorts had arrived at Zeta Halo. With her were just over a dozen escort ships, and onboard the UNSC’s most powerful warship was a massive assembly of other Spartans outfitted with the most advanced warfighting technology available to man.
And as she watched another Banished dreadnought slam into Infinity’s side, Leyla knew that humanity was losing.
She felt numb, and the world around her faded away as she watched the ship that had symbolized human perseverance and might be torn to pieces. She barely felt it when Rakesh grabbed her by her chestplate, and used the last of his strength to hurtle her behind another outcropping as the Serpahs streaked overhead and the mountainside went up in an inferno. Everything went black.
==Chapter 3: Morris==
UNSC Infinity, Day 1, Zero Hour
Ensign Bentley Morris had been too young to fight in the ‘real’ war and had been too lucky to have his inner colony homeworld ever visited by the Covenant. Even still, he’d wanted to help, wanted to do something to better humanity, and he’d wanted to seem brave for Esperanza Saldivar down the street. Esperanza Saldivar was now, or at least hopefully still was, Esperanza Saldivar-Morris, but he’d surely failed at the rest of his goals.
The Condor dropship pilot fell face-first onto the shuddering deck of one of the UNSC Infinity’s hallways, knocked down by the crash of yet another Banished warship into their side. Steiner was going to take off without him, he was going to die here in this hallway, immobilized by panic as red alert lights pulsed and warning klaxons wailed. A shower of sparks fell onto him from some dislodged panel in the long white-walled hall, and he gritted his teeth as though there were nothing else he could do.
“Get the fuck up flyboy!” An unfamiliar voice screamed, a hand wrenching him to his feet. Morris blinked his eyes and tried to bring the man’s face into focus, but his Good Samaritan was suddenly met with a barrage of plasma. One bolt tore through the arm that had lifted Morris whilst the others burned holes through his chest and head, melting away the face before the pilot could even say if he knew it. The severed arm fell to the deck, and Morris’s eyes locked onto the Brute standing at the bulkhead between himself and the hangar, a cruel grin spread wide across its fangs. This was it.
Suddenly a gray figure slammed into the creature, knocking it back against the side of the bulkhead, snapping up its Assault Rifle, and dumping a long burst into the alien’s chest. Instantly he recognized it, a Spartan. This one wore gray armor with orange accents and a blue visor, he’d seen the type before, and they were usually up in operations rather than out in the field. Times were obviously different now.
“Move, now!” The Spartan barked, a woman from the sound of her voice. She raised up the rifle and fired past Morris at some unknown threat, one he didn’t stop to look for as he ran towards her and the hangar. He felt the heat as green bolts of plasma zipped by, but he kept running. Suddenly he was grabbed, yanked hard to the side, and looked to see that the Spartan had pulled him behind her to shield him from a trio of Needler shards.
Morris should’ve thanked her, should’ve said something, but she left him no time as she shoved him towards the descending stairs, firing again down the hall and coming after him. Morris took in the calamity for a moment and it nearly broke him. The hangar was in flames, fighters, dropships, scout drones, and ground vehicles that’d been being massed for deployment, they were all in flames.
He stopped for a heartbeat, then his eyes settled on a single Condor amidst all the others, her engines hot, a skeleton in a tuxedo wearing a tophat painted on her nose. The Gentleman Ghost, his bird. Ludwig Steiner, his best friend, and copilot must’ve actually made it after all. Morris let out a small sigh of relief, then gasped as the Spartan gave him another shove.
“Keep going, now! Move it!” She barked, her Germanic accent adding an extra layer of intensity to the command. Morris didn’t make her say it again, rushing down the metal stairwell into the carnage with the Spartan hot on his heels.
“Ensign Steiner, I have your pilot, Captain Zheng I am sorry, your man didn’t make it.” The Spartan spoke, her voice made metallic by the helmet she wore. It was a conscious choice to speak the words where he could hear, and as Morris ran past the corpses of other men and women, he wondered if she had done so to give him some kind of comfort, or to make him feel guilty. 
If it was the former, it wasn’t working, if it was the latter, it most certainly was. 
Morris flinched as an explosion rocked the deck and a stray plasma bolt zipped past his head, his stomach twisting in knots as he skidded to a halt. Before he could cower the Spartan was on him again, grabbing him by the collar of his flight suit and yanking him along with her, firing off a burst from her assault rifle into an enemy he was too fearful to look for.
“Goddamnit Ensign keep moving! There’s a lot of lives depending on you!” The Spartan thundered, her voice crashing through the immobilizing fear like a hammer. He could see the Gentleman Ghost through the smoky haze, born of the wreckage of a Pelican that stood between them and his dropship. Arrayed around her troop bay Morris saw troopers fighting, Marines more than likely, but Infinity carried Army Infantry too. Among the Gentleman Ghost’s defenders, he also saw two abnormalities, in bulky armor and domed helmets were a pair of Hellbringers, seemingly having exchanged their flamethrowers for Battle Rifles.
He didn’t think long about it, didn't think about how his crew chief wasn't among the defenders, he just kept running.
“Down!” The Spartan roared, enforcing the command before he had time to carry it out himself with a shove. As Morris fell forward, tumbling onto the hangar deck he looked back to see a Brute trying to rip apart the Spartan, having abandoned its ranged advantage to confront her in close quarters with a massive hammer. Morris was frozen in terror.
The Brute swung its cudgel like it weighed no more than a twig snapped from a tree. Even amidst the chaos he heard the hammer tearing at the wing as the Brute swung it sideways, the Spartan leaping over it, loosing a few rounds, then rolling away from an overhead strike. The hammer boomed and emitted a wave of energy that Morris felt in his bones, but it didn’t seem to phase the Spartan. He should’ve acted, should’ve moved, there must’ve been at least three different weapons on the hangar floor within his reach, but Morris could not will himself to move for them, he was terrified.
It caught her on a backswing, the jagged edge on the hammer’s rear burying itself in the Spartan’s armored torso with a heavy thunk against the metal, something wet crunching beneath it. She didn’t cry out, not loud enough for Morris to hear it, but the Spartan twisted away, grasping for the fresh and bleeding wound in her side as the alien let out a low, coarse laugh. It raised its hammer up to strike her down, not even bothering to look at Morris, though he was sure it meant to squash him like a bug when it was done. And he did nothing.
Gunfire came from the corner of his vision, small rounds peppering the Brute before it could strike, blood blossoming from two dozen wounds as one of the Hellbringers stepped through the smoke firing an M20 Submachine Gun. The Brute roared, turned, and brought the hammer down. It was like the top of the marine had never existed, crushed into red oblivion as the Gravity Hammer struck them. Bits of blood and gore sprayed, Morris felt something wet and sticky hit his cheeks, but as horror strangled him into inaction the Spartan did just the opposite.
In spite of her wound, she surged forward, pressing into the Brute, jamming the barrel of her rifle into a gap beneath his chestplate, and firing up. The rifle’s howls were muffled against the Brute’s hide, light flashing in its chest as the Spartan made a ruin of its ribcage. With an open hand, it swung at her, but the fight had already left it, and its paw fell limp just short of the Spartan’s head. The Brute collapsed, and the supersoldier gave a look to the ruined remains of the Hellbringer, then back to Morris as she reloaded the MA40, the blood flowing from her side slowing to a trickle as her armor’s bio foam autoinjectors worked to fill the wound. It’d hold for a little while.
“Let’s go.” She ordered pain in the words that stopped her from shouting. He complied, scrambling up and averting his eyes from the mangled corpse as he stumbled through the haze. Smoke from the Pelican burned his eyes, and the acrid smell of something amidst the flames put tears in them. He wiped them as he ran the last of the distance towards the Gentleman Ghost, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach that this would only be the beginning.
“Thank Christ you’re okay, I owe you Spartan Wetzel.” Called out a familiar voice from the top of the ramp as he approached, passing a pair of marines at the foot of it laying down cover fire. Morris ought to have noticed the other Hellbringer, staring out blankly to where their partner lay more puddle than a person, but his eyes affixed themselves to the speaker. Thomas Steiner offered out a hand to him, which Morris took, and let his co-pilot and best friend pull him the rest of the way up and give him a slap on the shoulder as reassurance. 
“Don’t you ever go to the galley without me again.” Steiner shoved Morris’ flight helmet into his hands. For half a heartbeat he stared down it as Spartan Wetzel took up a defensive position alongside the marines. It was a drab green hunk, punctuated by a solitary orange stripe running down the right side. Steiner’s stripe ran down the left, the whole aesthetic had been his idea.
Morris wanted to laugh at his friend’s jab, he knew Steiner was only trying to get him out of the state of shock he seemed to be lingering in, but nothing came. He only gave the man a nod, then inclined his head towards the cockpit. There was no time to waste.
“Okay, people let’s move! The Gentleman is leaving and if you are not on her you are staying behind! Get the wounded secure and get strapped in!” Steiner called out, somehow finding a commanding voice to speak that Morris would have never thought he had in him.
A man rose up from farther back in the bay as the two pilots rushed for the cockpit. Stern-faced with tanned skin and short black hair, Morris saw the gold oak leaf of a Major on his collar and connected him to the ‘Zheng’ the Spartan had been speaking to. One of his men had been the first to die saving Morris’ skin. He gave Morris a hard stare, but he seemed too focused on the task at hand to be caught up with faulting the pilot for anything.
“Go for the ring, that’s an order.” The marine commanded, and though Morris felt dread sink its claws into him, he didn’t protest. Somehow he’d known they weren’t going to be able to try and jump to safety. It would’ve been suicide anyway, some Seraph would’ve cut them to pieces before they ever got the Condor’s slipspace drive to fire. Both he and Steiner nodded, as they stepped into the cockpit before suddenly a cry from outside froze them both.
“Incoming!” Morris flinched at the callout, looking back over his shoulder and expecting to see a Fuel Rod blast coming to envelop him in a ball of fiery green, but the reality was much worse. He was a massive creature, towering above any man and many of his own kind, the massive weapon in his hand had its end wreathed in red energy blades, and his face was marked with white war paint. Morris had seen the beast’s face a hundred times in briefings and reports, but none of it could’ve made him prepared to see him in the flesh.
Atriox.
“Get us in the air, now! Now!” Zheng commanded and the two of them rushed inside the cockpit without another word. Morris’ heart was thundering in his chest, beating so loud he barely heard the cacophony of gunfire as the troops in the Gentleman Ghost’s bay tried in vain to slow them down. Steiner had already run preflight and warmed the engines, Morris just had to get them out of the hangar. Fear forced him to look, and drew his eyes to the rear camera feed where the Banished War Chief all but laughed off their resistance. He was closing too fast, even as Morris tugged at the controls, and the Condor lifted from the ground he knew it would be too late, that they had been too slow, that it had all been for nothing.
Then he saw the Spartan, leaping from the troop bay assault rifle blazing. 
Rounds plinked off the Brute’s shields and armor, and though the Spartan landed a harsh kick across the War Chief’s head it wasn’t enough. A massive paw caught her leg, armored fingers crushing down and slamming her into the deck like a rag doll. The Spartan did not falter, not even for a second. Her rifle and been torn away by the force of the blow, but in a flash, she’d pulled a sidearm, and loosed a flurry of gunfire in the seconds it took for Atriox to bring up his mace, and then bring it down on her.
There was no question of her survival. Nor was there any time for him to process the shock of seeing one of humanity’s champions be squashed like a bug.
The Condor turned, its ramp raising and closing as it began to move, but even as Morris moved as quickly as he could he knew it wouldn’t be enough, that the monster below them would still find a way to utterly destroy them. But he didn’t. Something attacked Atriox from afar, a blur of green on Morris’ camera, and whose intervention he did not question. The ramp closed as the Condor surged forward, engines carrying out into the void of space and into a new chaotic hell.
“Bentley, I need you, man! I need you here and now!” Morris looked up at Steiner and saw his friend looking down at him from the copilot’s seat, as serious an expression across his face as he’d ever seen. Absently Morris nodded, clamped himself in, grabbed the stick, and rolled.
All at once the noise that had been drowned out by his fear of the War Chief returned, he heard the chaos within the Condor’s hold, the moans of the wounded, and a dozen proximity alarms all blaring in unison. The Condor weaved between two hunks of hull plating, edges still red hot from plasma, all around them battle raged. Morris banked to one side, and a Longsword zipped past, hot on the tails of a trio of Banshees, reducing their number to two with a well-placed missile. He angled the thrusters, tucking into a tight roll, narrowly avoiding a Broadsword that cut upwards with a Seraph close behind its plasma hungrily biting at the human fighter. 
Morris’ eyes dropped to his display for half a heartbeat before returning to the battle before them. There had been contacts on approach, he knew he’d have to act accordingly. All the fear he’d felt in the hangar seemed to have fallen away once he had the stick in his hands. Why couldn’t he have been this way minutes earlier? If he’d just been able to keep it together then-
“How many on us?” He cut the thought short, dipping the Condor’s nose to dive past the listing wreckage of a Pelican, yanking it back up and banking hard to the left to avoid a glut of plasma fire from their pursuers. 
“Three looks like Banshees.” Steiner’s hands danced over consoles behind Morris’ head, working to keep the Gentleman from an untimely end.
“They got a lock?”
“None yet, they will soon.”
“Prep countermeasures, see if we can get some help,” Morris spoke with a voice like ice, weaving the Condor between blasts, and rolling sharply to keep the Banshees from getting the hard lock they were desperately chasing. Steiner put out a ping, and a burst caught them. Armor plating along the troop bay warped under the heat but held as Morris grit his teeth, racing towards the strangely idyllic ring hanging in the void. 
“Gentleman Ghost this is Windfall Four, coming in hot, hang tight.” A voice promised them over the COMM, Morris felt the slightest relief, he didn’t know them by name, but he knew Windfall were Spartan pilots. Then he recalled what befell the last Spartan, and wondered if he was calling this one to his death too. An F-41 Broadsword rushed in from the side, loosing a trio of missiles and a barrage from its cannon, then streaking off back into the carnage. The three red blips pursuing them vanished, the Banshees exploding into fireballs in the void.
They had cleared the chaos of the immediate ship-to-ship combat before them lay the ring, and Morris slammed the throttle to full. All around them, other UNSC ships raced for the surface, Pelicans, Condors, Darters, Bumblee escape pods, and even a singular massive D-20 Heron. The Infinity had been carrying a compliment of twenty of the things, a serious step down from her normal number, but still plenty.
Morris hadn’t even seen the burnt hulls of any of them in the carnage, and only the one before him was active on the BattleNet. The others must’ve been destroyed before they could even launch.
“All UNSC aircraft, this is Lieutenant Nguyen on the Henhouse, you are to prioritize our escort at all costs, over.” It was strangely calm, the Banished craft seemingly too preoccupied with Infinity and her escorts to prioritize the fleeing ships, but even then Morris balked at the Heron’s demand.
“Lieutenant I’ve got wounded aboard, I can’t fly cover for you with guys in conditions like this.” A woman protested before Morris worked up the stomach to do it himself, or Steiner did, which seemed more realistic.
“If you want them to have a shot in hell at recovery you’ll follow my orders. There’s nothing groundside with any kind of facilities, this firebase is their only shot.” Nguyen protested, and Morris looked back over his shoulder to Steiner, both wearing the same dubious expression, eyes flicking to the internal camera of their troop bay, of the men and women fighting just to hold one another together. 
“If we ever get off this ring he can court-martial us.” Steiner declared, more bravely than Morris could’ve, but he gave his friend a nod anyway. Then the alarms began to blare, and their momentary reprieve was over.
Morris saw it, a storm of missiles and plasma chasing after them, Banished aircraft pulling out of the way as one of their dreadnoughts unleashed a storm upon the pack of human ships. His stomach twisted again, and his tongue went dry, but when he squeezed the controls he willed himself to keep it together.
“Countermeasures now!” He barked, yanking up and cutting to the side as the first missiles streamed past. Wordlessly Steiner deployed a storm of chaff, the line of UNSC ships streaking towards the surface doing the same, a hundred thousand new stars twinkling in the void drawing away the lances in the dark as they closed in on them. One missile streaked past, another went for the bait and detonated somewhere behind the Condor’s tail, and the third never came. 
The Halo’s atmosphere began to buffet against the Condor’s hull, the greens and blues of the ringworld filling the cockpit alongside the red and orange firestorm. Any relief he felt died when he saw how many others had not been as lucky. A Pelican spiraled out, colliding with a Bumblebee and the ensuing fireball consumed a Darter that was too slow to respond, and beyond them and the scores of others he saw the Henhouse. The massive boxy Heron had been gouged open along her midsection by a stream of plasma, one of her engines had caught a missile, and she was tumbling in a fiery death roll.
There would be no survivors.
No second volley came, instead as they rushed into the atmosphere a new swarm of Banshees rose to meet them, Phantoms scrambled about to cut them down as they tried to land, and massive anti-air cannons spewed death into the skies. Morris tried to keep his cool, remembered Steiner and the others, and tried to slip back into the numbness with his hands around the stick, but it was becoming too much.
“Six inbound contacts!” Morris banked left, plasma raked his right wing, rolled right, and another gout sheared off one of the rear engines. Alarms blared, red flashing over him as he fought to level the Condor out, bleeding smoke and fire as he barely got them over the peak of a snow-capped mountain. The Gentleman Ghost wailed as metal melted, and somewhere he heard the Major screaming from within the bay.
His heart pounded in his ears, the alarms continued to wail, the stick shook in his hand so fiercely he thought it would tear apart, then the blast from an anti-cannon gored the Condor, and the Gentleman Ghost ceased to fly, and began to fall.
“Fire everything, shit Bentley, slow us down!” Morris was trying, God he was trying. He forced himself to look at the display, to see the hole in their side, watching as the limp corpse of a marine was sucked out through it, and turning away as one who was not as dead was dragged towards it. The engines screamed as the ground rose up to meet them, rolling green hills all around. 
“Brace.” He muttered.
“Brace!” Steiner echoed, louder, fiercer. Morris pulled back hard on the stick, the airframe of the Condor whining as one of her airbreaks failed. He thought of Esperanza, of the brown of her eyes, the softness of her touch, and how harshly he’d spoken to her before he left. The last thing he felt was regret, and then the ground welcomed the Gentleman Ghost with a crash.
==Chapter 4: Bless==
Zeta Halo, Day 1, Zero Hour
“He’s coming, I’ve got to slow him down.” The words echoed inside Bless-G189’s helmet as she gripped the control sticks of the orbital entry pod falling towards Zeta Halo.
“Gerlind wait, Gerl-,” The line between the Spartan Iliana Samaras and the rest of Fireteam Anchor falling towards the ring in their pods and their mission handler, Gerlind Wetzel, went dead. Undoubtedly, the woman on the other end would follow it in short order. Facing Atriox himself rarely ended well.
So much had happened so quickly, one minute they’d been running through plans for the operation, and the next they’d been embroiled in a fearsome firefight in the Infinity’s halls, pushing towards the closest bay of drop pods. It would’ve overwhelmed some, pushed them over an edge, but not her, Bless had been shoved over her edge too many times to fall on someone else’s. This was what she’d trained for, what they’d all trained for.
She missed them.
Bless was frustrated, they should’ve stayed aboard Infinity, should’ve been beside Wetzel to take on Atriox. Five Spartans against one Brute? She didn’t care how good the Banished War Chief was, he’d have died right there. But they’d jumped the gun, stuck to their instructions, never once considering changing it up. Improvisation was the key to victory, she’d tested that a thousand times or more, but with Fireteam Anchor, at least in the chaos of the boarding, they’d played it by the book.
“What’s the plan boss?” Hadrian Colombo was the first to speak, which surprised her, she’d been betting on it being Vargas. “Do we go for the original target?” It was a good question, Bless’ hands had hovered over the controls for the pod from the second they’d dropped, and she’d watched as the time to adjust their course bled away faster and faster.
“Negative. Get to the ground, get rallied up, and we figure it out from there, got it?” Samaras stared out from the screen, the blue-green visor of her brown camouflage-streaked ENIGMA helmet seemingly looking Bless in her eyes.
“You got it,” Vargas affirmed.
“On you boss,” Colombo added.
“Copy.” Was all she said, stopping short of giving them nothing but a green acknowledgment light. It wasn’t personal, she didn’t have some grudge against her successors just like she hadn’t had a grudge against her team in Rio, they just weren’t Glaive. It’d been six years, and though she’d tried, no one was Glaive. It hurt to think they’d almost been gone from her life as long as they’d been part of it. It wasn’t the time to think about them now, she recalled Senior Chief Mendez’s drilling, how he screamed for them to never lose sight of the mission, and so she refocused.
Her hands wrapped around the control sticks as the Halo’s atmosphere buffeted against the pod's exterior, streaks of orange heat splaying over the canopy. Bless didn’t flinch, not as the pod shuddered when it cleared the atmosphere, not as anti-aircraft guns opened up, nor when she saw a pod only a few hundred meters away explode into a red fireball. This was what she was meant for, this was the war they’d trained her to fight.
“Get spread out, try to keep track of one another but prioritize evasion!” Samaras voice was punctuated by the boom of a close call with the Banished anti-air that sent ripples of static through her transmission. Bless didn’t bother with a vocal response, teasing the controls, firing thrusters to give her some clearance from the storm of pods around her, and watching as the countdown to chute deployment bled down to zero.
The metal drag chute billowed out from her pod, her jaw clenched as her body felt the slam of deceleration. Thrusters fired, and though she tired to keep her eyes on the three other pods she lost them when a gout of red plasma streaked past her canopy, barely missing her. Her altitude plummeted, her speed continued to drop and all at once she slammed into the surface.
“Touchdown hit it Spartan!” The gruff simulated voice of her AI, RDYR, bellowed in her ear. It reminded her of one of the instructors on Onyx, not one of the nice ones, but even still she’d found some comfort in the familiarity.
Even encased in MJOLNIR, she saw black stars across her vision, tasted a hint of blood, and felt all the air leave her lungs at once. The pod’s door hissed, and her training kicked in: the sheet of titanium blew away and Bless blinked in the angry crimson sunlight.
That was wrong, Zeta Halo wasn’t orbiting a red sun, not one the shade of boiling red plasma, and especially not three of them. She dove outwards, tucking into a roll as the plasma blasts impacted, heat and force washing over her armor and flaring her shields. 
She heard Lieutenant Commander Ambrose in her ear, whispering for her to remember, to do it all just like she’d practiced. Another lifetime’s training kicked in, Bless snapped up the MA5D assault rifle and fired along the trajectory of the blast, sweeping high. 
Hours of memorization gave her an instant briefing within her mind. Three blasts, crimson not blue, and that fell in an arc. It was a Ravager, a Brute weapon, sometimes handled by Elites in the Banished’s ranks, but either way, they’d likely have a band of lesser species along with them. That put her up against at least four tangos, but likely upwards of five.
Her vision cleared in time for her to jolt forward, a storm pink razor-sharp of Needler shards honing in on her. She dropped into a roll, shot up, and darted behind a shattered tree trunk as she got her bearings on the world around her. On instinct, she dropped the assault rifle’s empty magazine, slammed a new one home, and moved again.
She’d landed in a forest, all around her were tall Conifers, the ground covered in underbrush, and to her front were six contacts. The one with a Ravager was a Brute, a low ranking one considering no energy shields had flared up to spare him from the torrent of gunfire. He’d let out a muffled roar and fallen against a tree trailing dark blood down its bark. That left five.
She dropped low, swinging the rifle over the Jackal that had tried to make a pincushion of her with its Needler, and squeezed off a burst between the gap of its yellow shield. It squawked in pain as its gun arm was torn to ribbons, staggering long enough for her to put a single shot in its skull. Purple blood sprayed into the air, and that made four.
Frightened Grunts peppered the trees with plasma and Mangler slugs, the remaining Jackal screeching as it tried to assert control over the squat aliens. Bless came forward and put a round in its gizzard, snapped to the right, and raked a Grunt wielding a Mangler with gunfire. Then there were two. 
The Unggoy squealed in fright, one turning to flee as the other fired blindly in Bless’ direction, more concerned with its friend leaving it behind than the armored killing machine coming towards it and deftly avoiding its pitiful response. A burst cut through its chest, its orange carapace stained by its bright blue blood as the alien died with a scream. One left.
It ran as fast as its small legs would let it, trampling over twigs and brush with its arms splayed wide in the air. It squeaked in terror as a red metal hand snagged it by its methane tank, crimson fingers digging into the crevasses and yanking it back onto the forest floor. The Grunt threw up its arms and began to sputter, desperately trying to remember the human word for ‘mercy’. If it ever did recall the word, it came too late and would’ve fallen on deaf ears anyway. Bless’ knife punctured the Grunt’s skull with ease, ending its squealing with a wet squelch.
As the alien went limp, Bless again got her bearings, shaking blue ichor from the blade before returning it to its sheath on her lower chest. She returned to the bulk of the alien squad and relieved them of plasma grenades, both of their shield gauntlets, and the Brute’s Ravager which found a new home magnetized to her back. The shields weren’t a necessity as they once were, but it never hurt to be prepared.
Tilting her head skyward, Bless looked up through the green slit visor of her SOLDIER-class helmet and felt her stomach twist. Things weren’t going well, in fact, they were going so poorly that she almost thought she’d dropped back in time to the last war. Human ships belched fire and debris, dropships that streaked towards the surface became fireballs before they ever had a chance, and lifepods were lucky if they were spared the same fate. They were losing, and badly.
Bless checked her TACMAP and TEAMBIO, and found Fireteam Anchor alive but scattered. Vargas and Colombo had landed far to her east, seemingly having dropped down into a valley between mountains, while Samaras was not far to her north. She was getting closer too.
“The rest of your team is up and moving Spartan, best we do the same.” RYDR butted in as she finished securing her new armaments. Bless moved through the trees, eyes sweeping the area visually whilst her armor’s IFF-integrated motion tracker double-checked her. There was no sign of more Banished, though she caught the movement of her team leader in the distance. Samaras threw up a hand and waved to Bless, beckoning her towards her, and in the same instant, another drop pod crashed through the trees between them. Two more followed it, and the forest seemed to scream as heavy metal splintered its trees into oblivion.
For a moment the pods were still, and Bless’ unconsciously held her breath in fear the occupants might’ve been killed by a bad drop. Then the first’s door burst open, the thirds did the same, and the second which had landed nearest to Bless made the unmistakable sound of a fist pounding against its door. The Spartan moved and grabbed the door, her prosthetic fingers crumpling the metal around the edges as she ripped it away.
An ODST in black assault armor staggered out, hand pressed to her helmet as she swayed uneasily. It wasn't the best landing, the woman probably had a concussion. Bless took the time to look the troopers over, to take note that their armor wasn't the typical Shock-Assault armor, but instead was more a hybrid between that and the typical body armor sported by Marines and Army Troopers, but as unique as that was, it was the empty mag-clamps on their backs and white stripes on their helmets that gave it away. They were Drop Jet troopers, ODST experts in utilizing jetpacks and the like to turn a battlefield to their advantage. That also meant they were urban warfare specialists, and this ring was anything but urban. But Helljumpers were adaptable, they had to be. 
“Thanks.” The trooper muttered, fumbling for the M90 Shotgun still stored on the pod’s rack, clumsily yanking it out with two tugs, the second to free the weapon’s butt from a faulty clamp.
“You all good over there Nazia?” Called a man’s voice from one of the other pods, to which the woman shakily threw a thumbs up. Bless’ HUD populated the three trooper’s information as she offered the one called Nazia a hand, though she refused it. The woman was Corporal Nazia Hossain, the man who’d called for her was Sergeant Jamar Henderson, and the one who’s yet to speak was one Private Luka Ebner.
Bless trailed Corporal Hossain as she made her way to join her comrades, they’d already been joined by Samaras who Bless gave a small nod. Looking between his troopers and the two Spartans, Henderson gave a shrug and a chuckle.
“Three Helljumpers and two Spartans land on a Halo…” The Sergeant chuckled, trailing off and leaving the joke unfinished as he shook his head. 
“The Banished might as well pack it up now Sarge, it’s game over.” Private Ebner added, hefting the VK78 Commando he’d pulled from his drop pod over one of his shoulders. Everything from his words to the way he carried himself screamed arrogance when paired with the trooper’s youthful voice. He must’ve been close to Bless’ own age, which meant he hadn’t been fighting anywhere close to as long as the rest of them, but that didn’t seem to damper his confidence at all.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves Ebner.” Sergeant Peterson answered, approaching Hossain to try and check her over. She tried to rebuff him as she had Bless, but the elder ODST was a deal more persistent than she’d been. Eventually, Hossain relented, and slumped against the Sergeant’s upright pod, sitting on the forest floor as he checked her over.
“I’m sure your suits have already done it but I’ll be polite and introduce us the old-fashioned way since we have a second. I’m Sergeant Peterson, this is Corporal Hossain and Private Ebner. We’re with the 9th Drop Jet, I imagine the rest of us are uh, around.” The man pointed first to himself, then to the other two, and finally, he swept his hand widely to the Halo in general as he spoke, then turned his helmeted gaze to Bless expectantly. She felt the brief satisfaction at having guessed their unity right evaporate as something inside her twisted, and the Spartan cocked her head slightly before Samaras rescued her from the awkwardness.
“I’m Spartan Samaras, that’s Spartan Bless, we’re from Fireteam Anchor. Our other two are down the mountain, working their way up.” It was good they had a concrete answer on that, and that they could confirm Vargas and Colombo were both fine from TEAMBIO alone. Bless imagined Samaras had already checked on them both individually already, so she didn’t bother. 
“Guess we’re Bless-ed.” The Private piped up.. She’d just been about to think that they were lucky to have stumbled onto some of the 15th’s members, even though the trio didn’t seem to have the jetpacks that their unit specialized in, they were still a group of Helljumpers with a fearsome reputation. But now it was all Bless could do not to groan.
“Oh, he’s going to be fun.” Samaras voice crackled to life in her ear over an isolated channel, leaving the team’s dedicated one silent so as not to distract Vargas and Colombo in whatever they were doing. “How many more jokes do you think he’ll try before he tires himself out?” She sounded amused, though Bless was anything but.
“I ‘dunno.” Bless looked past the ODSTs to the other Spartan and shrugged her shoulders slightly. She hoped it wouldn’t be much longer, there was enough to deal with already. 
“He means well,” Samaras assured her, though Bless couldn’t have said why.
“I guess.” To her surprise, Samaras gave a chuckle in a response and left Bless wondering what could’ve been amusing at all. Her hands tensed around her rifle, and she swept her eyes over the surrounding forest, being drawn towards the sound of Gorespike cannons firing into the air. Things were easier then, that was an objective, one she could focus on.
“Hossain’s got a concussion but otherwise we’re operational. What’s the plan Spartans?” This time Peterson looked to Samaras instead of Bless. Above the trees a burning Condor dropship swept overhead, belching smoke as her engines roared out in defiance. It went well past them, descending into the valley and seemingly planting the same idea in the minds of everyone else.
“Looks like it’s to take out those guns,” Samaras answered, looking at Peterson and inclining her head towards the thundering booms of the alien artillery. The Sergeant gave her a curt nod, then handed Hossain back her helmet, the shotgun-wielding ODST groggily shoving the helmet back onto her head. Bless watched as the Sergeant helped Hossain to her feet, gave her a nod, then shouldered his M7 submachine gun.
“Anchor Two, Anchor Three, you two read me?” The team’s dedicated channel opened as Samaras took point, with Bless instinctively dropping back to cover their rear.
“Yep, I hear you One.” Vargas was the first to answer, his voice strained, but calm. Neck deep in a firefight no doubt
“Loud and clear.” Colombo agreed.
“Bless and I have linked up with friendlies, we’re moving on those cannons. Think you’ll be joining us?” 
“Not likely. Got our hands full down here, gonna stay full for a while too.” Bless checked TEAMBIO as Colombo gave his answer, instinctively checking to see if either he or Vargas had dropped out of the green. They were fine, just like she’d known they would be. Of course, they were fine.
“Understood, keep each other in one piece, once the skies are clear we’ll loop back to you.” Samaras never broke her stride as she moved through the trees, but Bless saw a tightness in her movement, small things that suggested worry. Fireteam Anchor had lost half their number not that long ago, and Wetzel had been a good friend from what Bless saw. But grief and anxiety had no place on the battlefield, and Samaras was handling both with ease.
She’d have been a good Three, an older one, not like the washouts-turned-instructors that had made her bleed for the smallest infractions, but the sort Deep Winter would’ve taught them about in his lessons. Maybe it was too quick to make that kind of judgment, but Bless felt safe in her assumption.
“Will do One, see you soon, Two out.” Colombo’s line went out.
“Ditto, save some for us while you’re at it, Three out.” Vargas followed suit. Bless caught Samaras looking back over her shoulder to glance at Bless, and gave a soft shrug. Nothing else to do for it, they just had to keep moving.
The Banished patrol that had greeted her hadn’t been the only one of its kind, but the two that they came upon on their way towards the Gorespikes lasted half as long. Each was led by a low-ranking mercenary, one was a Brute like the first, the other an Elite with a low-grade combat harness, and their underlings had been easy pickings once they’d been dispatched. Samaras was impressive, though Bless wasn’t sure what she’d expected, her leader was as much a Spartan as she was. Sergeant Peterson and Corporal Hossain, even with a likely concussion, were plenty effective, but it was Ebner that she took note of. In those brief engagements he’d been decent, frustratingly so, but she kept those thoughts to herself as they came upon a clearing.
Waved up by Samaras, Bless moved past the ODSTs and slipped behind a tree next to her fellow Spartan. A trio of anti-air cannons were assembled before them, each planted at the edge of the small valley before them. It’d been a green place once she imagined, hills and outcroppings that weren’t crowned with red and black fortifications still had patches of grass that hadn’t yet tread down into nothing by alien boots. The valley was like a wound in the Halo’s carefully cultivated environment, a dark gouge that was now infected with the Banished horde. 
The Gorespikes were firing intensely, concentrating on something big behind the humans. Maybe one of the Herons, or- her eyes drifted upward as a long shadow and instantly she felt her heart sink. It was bigger than a Heron. One of Infinity’s escort frigates was sinking towards the surface, emergency thrusters straining, bleeding flame and smoke from its gray frame. Bless didn’t know which of them it was, and it didn’t matter either way, there was no saving it.
The warship groaned as it went over them, the Banished gun ripping new holes into its hull as it fell to the surface. It drifted beyond the guns, and the valley, descending further and further until somewhere it crashed. Bless couldn’t have said where, but she heard it off in the distance and felt the ground shake with the impact, though that might’ve just been the cannons. 
With that bit of prey down, the cannons began to turn, hunting a new target, and firing when each found one of their own. A long-hulled D96 Albatross became a fireball as it tried to evade one of the cannons, a Pelican lost a wing to another, and the third tried and failed to cut down a Longsword flying low. The delta-wing aircraft banked between blasts and answered with a salvo of missiles that punched into the offending cannon, yellow explosions flowering across its red-plated structure quickly being joined by a blast of crimson and purple as the emplacement was destroyed.
The Longsword kept flying, but it made no effort to come back around, nor could it with three Banshees racing after it. At least they weren’t after the storm of Bumblebees breaking through the atmosphere, distracting the Banshees from them must’ve been the pilot’s goal Bless imagined.
“Well, that’s one.” Ebner couldn’t help himself, and Bless rolled her eyes inside her helmet, looking over to Samaras.
“Still plenty to go around.” Samaras had a hint of amusement in her voice as she looked out over the entrenched Banished. The aliens had been thrown into a panic by the strafing run, teams of Grunts ran for the burning gun with Brutes chasing after them, barking harshly as they made their underlings recover what munitions they could and ignore their scores of dead and dying. A pair of Hunters stood sentinel at the closest gun, and a troupe of Sangheili Ultras watched on from the further one, Bless and Samaras marked them and a dozen other targets as they surveyed the area.
“Gotta hit the closer one, they’ll shoot more down if we try and reposition to get the second,” Samaras observed, though in a manner that left it open to response.
“The Hunters will slow us down, give the Elites and the teams at the third gun time to organize a response. Might be a risk we have to take.” Bless countered, a tenseness building in her stomach as the seconds ticked by.
“True, but you and I can reposition a lot easier than they can. No camo in those ODST suits last I checked.” 
“Could make them wait here, or have them try and round up survivors from pods.”
“I think that’s too big an ask, they’re tough but they’re not even at fireteam strength and Hossain’s bell is rung pretty good.” Samaras made a good point, and Bless looked back over her shoulder to the shotgun-wielding ODST and found her absently clutching at her helmeted head. 
“Sounds like we move on the first gun then.” Bless watched the Hunters as they patrolled below the massive cannon, the behemoths scanning their surroundings for a danger they knew had to be lurking somewhere.
“Yeah, sounds like it. Any ideas on how to approach it then Bless?” The young Spartan looked to her elder and felt a strange sense of what might’ve been warmth. She didn’t know why, but it felt special. Years spent working as a force multiplier on Colonial Security teams had made her forget what it was like to be more than something that was simply pointed in the direction of a problem and expected to follow orders. It must’ve been since her time on Glaive since anyone had really asked.
She missed them, and as she missed them she remembered them, and as she remembered them an idea came into Bless’ mind. She settled her gaze on the active gravity lift beneath the gun, and felt a small smile tug at the corners of her lips. “How’s your av-cam looking?” Bless asked, a small smirk hidden under the thick titanium alloy of her helmet.
“Fully charged,” Samaras answered, a smugness in her tone that suggested she liked where this was going. 
It didn’t take much to convince the ODSTs to go along with the plan, Samaras traded Hossain her MA40 for the trooper’s M90, and Bless exchanged the MA5D for Peterson’s M7, sliding the submachine gun onto her left thigh, the magnetic plate securing it in place. She’d use the Ravager before anything, especially with the Hunters.
They moved fast and low, sliding down into the valley, dragging an Elite into the shadows with Samaras’ wickedly curved karambit opening the warrior’s throat while Bless dispatched his fellow sentry, a Jackal, with a swift twist of its neck. Like daytime ghosts they slipped closer and closer, the Hunters had sauntered off to the far side of the gun, troops filing back in from the destroyed gun moved past them without a clue, even the ever-powerful noses of the Brutes did not catch their scent in the air.
They didn’t have much in the way of explosives, a few grenades between the two of them, so they’d have to get close, up the lifts and inside more than likely, but that was alright, they could handle it. A larger Grunt waddled past the unaware of the demons in his wake, heavy weapons strapped to its back for its superiors to take as they needed, but once it had gone there was nothing between them and the gravity lift up into the Gorespike’s interior.
“Thirty seconds until camouflage module shutdown Spartan.” RYDR reminded her, it was more than enough, the game was already won. Samaras stepped into the light, her camouflage shifting and distorting but not enough to blow her cover, the lift pulled her up and Bless followed. The light of the gravity lift surrounded her, an invisible hand lifted her up as though the Ron of power armor were nothing, floating her gently upwards before something heavy wrapped around her leg and wrenched her out. She was torn from the light and slammed down into the dirt as a beast let out a roar.
“Bless!” Samaras called out.
Bless hit the ground hard, but she’d had too many lessons drilled into her to panic. Above her stood a Brute in heavy black and red power armor, adorned with the trophies of battles won and enemies slain, fury in its eyes as it let go of her leg and took its massive Gravity Hammer in both hands. She smiled, it was too damn slow. The Ravager in her arms thundered, a crimson burst of plasma splashing over the Chieftan at close range, flaring his shields, the second burst staggered him, and the gun site erupted into chaos.
“Don’t you dare turn around!” She roared back, rolling to her side, finding her footing, and springing behind the nearest piece of cover as a dozen different Banished troops turned their weapons and fired from all sides. The worst of it went harmlessly against the heavy crate she’d dove behind, but they were everywhere. A lance of red slammed into her shields from a Stalker Rifle, and gout of blue and green joined it, flaring and shattering the protective energy barrier in an instant.
It would’ve been easy to panic, she was exposed, her shields broken, her teammate out of reach, but Franklin Mendez had not trained her to panic. Bless snapped up up the Ravager, bracing it against her forearm and firing into a trio of Grunts before activating the appropriated Jackal shield gauntlet, the blue circle absorbing another blast from a plasma rifle as gunfire erupted from the tree line.
The ODSTs tore into the confused chaos with precise and coordinated fire. The Jackal sharpshooter never got off another shot from her Stalker rifle, the Elite leading a response team to flank Bless found himself with a fresh hole in his head, and she dropped back to avoid the swing of the now enraged Chieftain. The hammer sprayed dirt into the air, and Bless fired again, and again and again. The Brute came forward through the storm as his shields melted away, and his armor cracked, swinging the hammer from the side in the blink of an eye.
He was still too slow.
Bless leaped over the sideswipe, landed, then rolled to avoid an overhead slam. She came up, pivoted, and brought the Ravager to bear. For the briefest moment, the Chieftain realized his folly, knew his end had come, only for a rifle to punch a pair of messy holes into the back of his helmet from the treeline. The VK78 had a distinct bark when it fired, she’d have to remind Ebner to pick better targets.
“Spartan, Hunters on approach, best get something heavy!” RYDR warned through the facade of a draw, snapping her attention to the incoming stream of green plasma. The first Hunters canon ripped up the ground and melted through the Banished supply crate as Bless raced out of its path, hammering her shoulder into a Jackal that stepped into her path into the ground, crushing its skull under her prosthetic as she sprinted.
“Ryder, thrusters now.” She commanded, the AI complying with a quick “Yes ma’am” and priming the evasive equipment. The ODSTs continued to fire, small arms fire cutting into the exposed parts of the colonies as they tried to train their sights on Bless. The beasts roared and the second turned, shielding its bond-brother’s back and firing a barrage of green from the heavy repeater cannon on its arm. The other stayed on Bless, another continuous stream of death spewing from its cannon as the Gorespike above them began to lower its barrel from the sky and turn.
“Almost done, hang in there,” Samaras called over the COMM as the MJOLNIR’s integrated thrusters fired, jetting Bless backward from a full sprint as the Hunters exchanged positions, a few rounds finding their way through the gaps in their armor and spraying orange blood. The one with the beam cannon laid into the treeline with a roar while the one with the repeater unleashed a barrage at her. The Jackal shield absorbed the first torrent and broke as she weaved behind one of the Gorespike Cannon’s supports, and the rest harmlessly dug into the weapon’s exterior as it lined itself up with a new target.
Then the worms caught on.
Roaring as the cannon whirred up, energy crackling along the barrel, Bless held the Ravager’s trigger down and let the capacitors begin to charge. The Hunters turned for the gravity lift and made for it, the seemingly ground rumbling with each of their titanic footsteps, but as a long burst from Ebner somewhere in the treeline gored one of their backsides, the pair resumed their defensive formation, bringing shields to bear and spraying death back at the humans as the cannon they were meant to protect flowed in preparation to fire.
“Get me a firing solution.” She commanded the AI.
“Yes ma’am, good thinkin’.” Bless broke into a sprint, the Hunters with the repeater quickly catching sight of her again and opening fire, but it’s shots went wide, green bolts of plasma zipping past as the Spartan dropped into a slide. On her HUD a faint line arced out from the reticle general for the Ravager, terminating between the two Hunters. When she snapped up the now overcharged Ravager, the weapon shaking in her hands as it fought to contain the excess, the line, and the reticle flashed red. She let the trigger go, and the weapon spat a heavy blast along the projected trajectory, slamming down onto the back of the Hunter firing into the trees, and splashing onto the rear of the one fixated on her.
Both of the beasts screamed in agony as the cannon above them fired across the valley rather than into the sky, consuming the other anti-air gun in an explosion. The ground shook furiously, more angrily than it should’ve, but Bless didn’t stop to think about it. The second gun was down, and this one was done. She cast the depleted plasma weapon into the dirt, took the submachine gun from her thigh in one hand, and palmed one of the frags in the other.
The Spartan shot forward arming the M9 Fragmentation Grenade and underhand tossing it between the feet of the daze Hunters as she closed the gap between herself and the pair. The explosion consumed the bonded pair in flame and metal for an instant, one of them collapsing to the ground with a loud death groan. The one that survived, its repeater cannon humming, let out a scream of rage and pain then charged towards Bless even as the troopers opened up on its exposed back.
It swung its heavy shield down at her, the massive slab of armor coming at her like an executioner’s axe, intended to split her down the middle. At the last possible second her thrusters fired again, pulling her wide of the strike as the Hunter’s momentum carried it past her. She brought up the SMG, and squeezed the trigger, joining her fire to a barrage from what must’ve been Ebner’s Commando and letting led ravenously devour the thick orange worms that made up the massive alien. But it didn’t stop, even as the onslaught nearly chewed it in half the beast fought on, swinging back around wildly with its shield, using the momentum to snap about wildly quick.
Bless fired the thrusters again, an alarm flashing on her HUD that she was dangerously close to overtaxing the thrusters and causing system damage. The jolt carried her clear of the strike, but only barely. The Hunter let out a deep, guttural roar, coming down on her with another swing, then another, then another. It was all she could do to evade each successive blow, Bless didn’t have the time to notice the Gorespike above them begin to spew smoke or the shape that dropped from it in a blur of speed, but neither did the Hunter.
Leaping up from behind onto the Hunter, Samaras grabbed onto one of the remaining spiked protrusions on the alien with one hand and jammed the M90 shotgun deep into the writhing Lekgolo colony with the other. It only took one blast, the shotgun that had been a wartime workhorse thundering even as the wriggling mass muffled it. The worms were shredded and pulverized, and the Hunter fell without a noise. Bright orange blood flowed from the behemoth's corpse, seeping into the dirt as Bless caught her breath. Hunters always fought hard, but this one had been uniquely tenacious in her experiences.
“Four, you okay?” Samaras pumped the shotgun, ejecting a smoking shell casing from the weapon and stepping to Bless with an outstretched hand. Before Bless could protest, Samaras had laid a hand on her shoulder and given it a small shake of reassurance. She gave the older soldier a thumbs up and a nod, and Samaras returned the latter gesture as the three ODSTs came down from the treeline and trotted over to them.
Halfway across the graveyard of Banished, Hossain stopped and pulled her helmet from her head, revealing a soft-featured face with olive skin that seemed to have gone unnaturally pale. She wretched, throwing up whatever meal she’d had last in the Infinity’s mess hall. Bless caught Peterson muttering a curse as he stopped in his tracks to double back to her, coming to her side while Bless and Samaras met Ebner halfway. The ODST cradled his Commando in his arms, tucking it tight against his chest and giving Samaras a nod.
“Nice moves out there.” He called to Bless, the same easy swagger in his voice that irked her to no end, doubly so given that she could tell he meant what he was saying. It would’ve been easier to chalk Ebner up to a typical untested jarhead, too full of himself to see straight. But despite his efforts, he was proving the opposite.
“Yeah, good shooting.” She replied, giving a small tilt of her head to him. Hossain wasn’t doing well, her helmet had fallen from her hand, and the open palm now clutched at her forehead. She never let go of the assault rifle though, despite the head-splitting pain she kept the weapon ready. Bless wished they weren’t in a situation where Hossain was going to need it so soon, but troops from the other gun were no doubt on their way.
The whine of Banished Vampires cut through the air, and the pair of Spartans realized there was no time to delay and no reliable method of resistance. They’d had to pull back, deep into the cover of the woods, all this they agreed on without a word. There was no need, their training, however different, had still done its part in forging the two into Spartans, and Spartans fought smart.
“Can she move?” Samaras called out, Peterson giving his answer in the form of a quick thumbs up, forcing Hossain to throw her arm over his shoulder. Ebner dropped an empty magazine from his Commando, slid a fresh one into its place, and threw a thumbs up as well, as though there had been any doubt in his ability to leg it. 
The Spartans gave one another a wordless nod, and shepherded their newfound allies back into the trees. The fight ahead was going to be a long one, there was no point in making some sort of stand. Not yet, anyway.
==Chapter 5: Morris==
Zeta Halo, Z + Three Hours
When he first stirred in the blackness, Bentley Morris was sure he was dead, and that maybe he was in hell. The red pulse of a hundred warning lights, the harsh flash of sparking wire, the smell of blood in the air. This must’ve been damnation, befitting a coward like him. He thought of the marine who’d pulled him to his feet, of Hellbringer, and of the Spartan. They’d died because of him, Morris decided, all because of him, and this was his punishment. So he’d shut his eyes and let the torment come.
But it didn’t.
He slipped in and out of consciousness twice more before the chaos outside forced the Gentleman Ghost’s nose to slip from the ledge it had come to rest upon. Suddenly the front half of the drop ship, the backside lost somewhere alongside the wya, was tumbling down a hillside. The cockpit’s class shattered as the canopy warped further and Morris' arms hung dangerously in the air as the wreckage tumbled end over end. 
He knew he was dead, he had to be. As the battered wreck burrowed itself into the dirt, the pilot slumped forward against his crash harness, a wall of dirt and what must’ve been the trunks of several trees blocking out most of the light. Morris wondered how long he’d linger before the end came, sitting on that somber thought for several minutes before he thought of someone besides himself.
Steiner.
Turning his head to look back over his shoulder, Morris instantly wished he hadn’t. Crimson streaks ran over his friend’s console, and though he couldn’t quite see it in the flickering light, he could tell that his friend’s crash harness had failed and his face had met with the controls before him with unimaginable force. No, it couldn’t be.
“Tom.” The words came weakly, and Morris felt the stinging where the harness must’ve bruised him. His arm came up, and pain radiated as he turned to try and reach back, weakly pawing at the air in the vain hope he might stir his friend from death. Morris felt empty, hollow, like despair would consume him as something hot began to build in his eyes. Steiner had been his best man, his best friend since they’d been too young to drink and barely old enough to drive, and just like that he was gone. Everything was gone.
He was never going to see Esperanza again, never going to be able to apologize for what he said. He was going to die here in this twisted hulk of metal, one among many corpses laid to rest in the same tomb. Then he heard it, through one of the breaches in the cockpit where a scarce few shafts of light came through, he heard a sound that filled the emptiness inside him with unadulterated dread. The squawk of a Jackal, and a Brute roaring in answer. They were going to kill him, or worse, Morris had always heard they liked to eat their prisoners, but only after they’d had their fun with them.
Fear pushed away all traces of melancholy as he tried to think of what to do, his mind racing as it tried to devise some way out, and when that failed it went back to Esperanza. She’d never know he was sorry, never know he realized that he’d been a fool, that he’d just been afraid. She was going to live on forever with that fight being her last memory of him. The dread of the alien was surpassed by the dread of that. If he had to die, then at least God had to let her know, right? He had to, Morris knew he did, he’d get on his hands and knees and beg if he had to, but she just had to somehow know.
The sounds came closer, and the top of the Condor shuddered as alien boots stepped onto it. A chill ran up his spine, but as if of their own accord Morris’ hands went to the harness, and slowly unclasped it. They’d kill him, they’d take away any chance he had of ever seeing her again, of ever making it right. That made him move, made him reach for the holorecorder they kept under the seat, and forced him to turn it on.
Blue light emanated from the small device, and for a moment he stared into it absently, unsure of what to say or do. The aliens were moving outside, picking over the corpses that had no doubt been flung about before they moved on to the main course. 
“Hey you.” He began, his voice raspier than he’d expected, the words harder to form. “I uh-, I’m in a bad way right now. Just had some stuff I wanted to say, if that’s okay.” Morris pushed himself to his feet, a litany of aches and pains loudly voicing their dissatisfaction and forcing him to brace himself against his seat.
“Wherever you are beautiful, I-uh, hope things are going better than they are here.” In the dim light, he fumbled around, feeling for the latch under Steiner’s console, flicking it open when his fingers finally found purchase. He’d barely qualified at the range with an MK50, but what his friend had kept stowed was going to make missing a little harder if he could work up the stomach to pull the trigger.
“What I said before I left, I-, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it at all, and I’m sorry. I just, I-,” He heard the Banished growing closer, their looting taking them into the Gentleman’s twisted corpse. “I was just scared of how things were, how they still are.” He was scared shitless now too, but something about the sacrifices he’d just witnessed, and the lifeless body that’s once been his closest friend forced him to keep moving.
“You’d make a great mother, we’d make great parents, but you, in particular, would be just…” He pulled the CSQ48 Bulldog Shotgun free from its rack and slid the drum into place, tugging on the foregrip and priming the weapon. “Y’know, you. You’d be perfect like always.” A Brute’s voice grew close, something sinister in it’s almost excited rumble. It smelled him, smelled his fear.
His hands trembled, but tightened around the Bulldog, going white at the knuckles as he cast a glance back at the recorder, and forced himself to smile. He’d have to turn it off, if she ever saw it, he couldn’t let her see what was going to happen to him next. When something heavy thudded against the door his stomach lurched, and his shaking hands drew up the Bulldog to what he hoped was the right height for a Brute’s head, hand going back and fumbling around for the recorder.
“I love you. I will always love you.” He said, finally looking back after his blind attempts failed, sheepishly giving the recorder a smile before he deactivated the device. Always wasn't going to be very long. All the courage he’d forced left him then as the metal of the door began to whine as something mighty began to try and force it open. He heard it laughing, and it took all he had not to let out a whimper. 
When the door gave out, and a Brute stepped through in minimal armor, its thick coat of hair bristling with malice and its toothy maw twisted into a mockery of a grin, all he had was no longer enough. His hands shook as the sound of fear escaped him, and despite his mind’s screaming they did not pull the trigger. The hulking alien laughed again, “I will savor the taste of your cowardice, hum-,”
He heard the crack after the Brute’s head had already exploded, bone and gore spattering over Morris’ chest and face as a white contrail hung in the air. He shuddered, eyes set on the fading wisp that had saved his life. Morris heard gunfire erupt, and the sound of alien screams, but his gaze only followed the line of the shot that had saved him to where it had punched through the Condor’s shattered canopy and into the compacted dirt. He stumbled back against his seat and clear of the doorway, immobilized by shock and fear and pain that despite his prayers he was beginning to feel more sharply. 
Morris didn’t know what to do. He’d done well on every flight evaluation and exceeded every metric behind the stick, but that was his place, nowhere else. He’d never gotten more than the bare minimum on any arms qualification, never mind anything like small unit tactics or anything else useful in combat, Survival, and Evasion training had by far been his weakest area. Yet all those things he struggled and failed at were all that was left. He wished he could delude himself into thinking Infinity would turn the tide in space, but the carnage, the chaos, it’d been too much. He was going to be stuck down here, useless, and he would no doubt die uselessly. It should’ve been him, smashed against his console, not Steiner, he’d have excelled where Morris never could’ve. 
A human scream cut through the miasma of self-loathing, pain thick in the person’s voice. Another soul about to die for him, why did they keep dying for him? Didn’t they know there were more important things, more important people? Fear turned to frustration, first with his would-be rescuers, then on himself for daring to think poorly of them. Frustration became anger, and anger somehow became action. 
He stepped out and saw it all unfolding. From somewhere above the wreckage, gunfire was bearing down on the aliens trying to stage a defense around their loot. The troop bay had been torn in half, but plenty of broken corpses still lay twisted in their harnesses, and a few of the bodies of those who’d been too wounded to strap in had made a charnel house of the wreckage. Gore and blood streaked across the once pristine bay, and at the mouth of the breach, a single Jackal stood hunched behind its shield, firing green bolts of plasma up at its foes, oblivious to him entirely.
Morris had always had a light step, and now it came in handy as he stepped forward with the Bulldog half raised, creeping closer and closer to the avian alien as he tried to work up the strength to pull the trigger. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, centered the Jackal in his sights, let his finger curl around the trigger, took one final step and,- slipped on a slick piece of something that had once been human.
Morris fell hard, his legs going out from under him and his body crashing against the floor. The shotgun twisted in his grasp and fired harmlessly into the ceiling as he let out a pained grunt. The Jackal squawked and turned its head toward the commotion, letting out a yelp of angry surprise when it saw him. Something had clearly possessed Morris, because even though he’d let the shotgun go, he’d not resorted to simply whimpering and waiting to die. He was up, and he was charging.
The Jackal was tall, the lithe alien no doubt had almost a quarter on meter him, but its bones were lighter, the muscles bound to them weaker, and Bentley Morris prayed to God that the difference would matter as he crashed into it with his shoulder. The Jackal let out an angry vocalization as he slammed it into a corpse-occupied crash harness, and grunted when fueled by pure adrenaline he threw a punch into its head.
It hissed as its head turned with the blow, shoving back against Morris and swinging its pistol at his head wildly, crashing against his helmet. It rocked his head and the alien pressed its advantage, a thin leg rising up and kicking hard at his stomach. It took more than the wind out of him, the sharp strike compounded the pain of his existing wounds. Somehow he found the resolve to snag the Jackal’s leg as he fell, twisting hard and bringing it down with him. They crashed onto the floor, and something in him made him roll up and onto his knees.
Morris sprung forward with his arm cocked back, and swung. It was the bravest he’d ever been, and he missed, the Jackal dipped its head out of the blow’s path and frantically swung up with a hand now absent a Plasma Pistol. Long talons cut through the helmet’s chin strap, carved through the flesh down to the bone, and tore out just below his right cheekbone, digging long scratches over the yellow glass of his visor as blood sprayed up inside it. It’d just made a ruin of the right of his face, but in spite of the taste of hot blood on his tongue, Morris’ focus did not waver. He fell back, gloved hands scrambling across the floor rather than rushing to feel his face.
They wrapped around the Bulldog, his finger on the trigger, and Morris brought the shotgun back around on the Jackal as it fumbled to recover its own weapon. The avian froze, a trace of what might’ve been fear in its beady eyes as Morris squeezed, and nothing happened. He had to pump it, goddamnit he had to pump it. Dread turned to sinister glee, and the Jackal let out a victorious squawk as it brought its weapon to bear on him. He’d tried. They’d have to tell her he tried. She’d forgive him, right?
A trio of cracks pierced the air, and Morris remembered the battle raging around them as the Jackal’s head and neck were turned to a mess of purple gore by the burst of a Battle Rifle. The alien collapsed into a pile, and the pilot was left gasping for air, whimpering as he began to cough from the inhaled blood. It hurt like nothing ever had, Morris turned on his side, reaching up and touching the wet mess with his hand, recoiling as it brought him only more agony.
“Don’t touch it!” A voice called. “Don’t touch it flyboy, lemme see.” It came closer, and as Morris brought his head around he saw a dark armored soldier through the half of the visor not obscured by blood. 
They knelt down and forced him up against the wall of the wreckage, pulling the helmet away and tossing it aside. He saw them better now, lightweight black armor over their contemporaries over blue-gray fatigues, a smooth blue-purple visor on a flatter helmet common to their element. Expeditionary ODSTs, clad in armor meant for long deployments without reliable support, Morris had heard the Infinity had a company or two onboard, but he’d never seen them.
There were legends about them, how they dropped into New Mombasa with the Chief, then followed him to take out a Covenant Prophet. In the present moment, Morris would’ve believed anything about his saviors. 
“You hit anywhere else?” Morris couldn’t speak to answer the question when he tired blood sloshed out instead of words, but he shook his head queasily. “Anything broken?” To that he managed a shrug, there was no way of knowing, everything hurt but he couldn’t have said what was a break and what was a bruise.
“Could’ve been worse, hold still.” The trooper steadied Morris’ head and carefully applied an adhesive patch over the gnarly wound, the slip ridges of flesh being bound together by some vile-tasting solution made all the more unbearable when it met the taste of blood. Morris nearly vomited but kept it down as the man put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
“He gonna make it Carillo?” Called out another voice, a woman’s to be sure. Morris’ eyes drifted out into the long gouge in the soil the Gentleman had made in her descent, and saw another ODST in the same cut-down armor as the man, hefting a long sniper rifle in her arms. She must’ve been who he had to thank for the Brute not tearing him to pieces, he’d thank her later when he could form words again.
“Oh yeah, he’ll be fine.” The first trooper, Carillo apparently, assured her, giving Morris what he imagined was meant to be a reassuring nod as he rose and offered the pilot an open hand. For a second he stared at it blankly, before reaching up to take it. The ODST wasn’t all that big, some of the Helljumpers were big and burly, but others, like Carillo, had slighter frames, which made the immense strength all the more surprising. Morris grimaced, pain radiating out as he was brought up to his feet, but nothing inside moved in a way it shouldn’t have.
“No breaks then, at least nothin’ serious.” The trooper took Morris’ helmet, set it back on his head, and gave it a reassuring thunk with a closed fist. It was meant to be endearing, but it hurt all the same. He tried to remember that intention as he grit his teeth and subsequently felt the wounds in his mouth pull against the binding agent. 
“We’ll wait on getting your name for now.” The trooper assured him mercifully. “I’m Staff Sergeant Carillo, that’s Lance Corporal Huang with the sniper, and Lance Corporal Taggert and Sergeant Jacinto are coming down now.” 
Morris nodded, first to Carillo, then to Huang, who gave him a small wave from where she stood outside. Carillo took the Bulldog from his hands, Morris’ fingers too stiff to unfurl but his grip too weak to resist. The trooper racked the weapon, a spent shell casing dropping from the shotgun before he pressed it back into the pilot’s grip. 
“Wasn’t gonna do you much good like that.” For a moment Morris thought to chuckle, but he considered the pain, and the bodies of his comrades lying still in their harnesses all around him, and by the time he’d thought better of it, the ODST had already stepped away to wave two more of his group into the wreckage. They must’ve been Taggert and Jacinto, one of them wore the same cut-down armor as Carillo and Huang, but the other wore the traditional Shock Assault armor most commonly associated with the Helljumpers.
“Grab what you need and whatever else you can, we need to get moving before any more of them show up.” Carillo addressed his troops, each giving him some form of affirmation as they stepped into the ruin of the Gentleman and began to strip the dead of their dog tags, and then of anything of tactical value. “You too flyboy, that ‘Dog won’t do you much good if it goes empty.” The senior trooper instructed.
“He got a name?” The one in the heavier armor asked. Carillo turned to Morris, as though he were going to ask him, but only put a hand on his chestplate and turned it slightly to one side so he could read the name inscribed in white lettering above the left pectoral.
“Ensign Morris, this is Jacinto, Jacinto this is Ensign Morris. Now that you’ve been introduced, let’s get moving.” Carillo’s voice was firm but far from flustered, and as he released Morris the pilot stepped away to go back to the cockpit.
“Ensign? Uh oh, looks like you’re outranked, boss.” Taunted the other newly arrived ODST, Taggert assumedly. The other troopers tossed him a glance, then turned to Morris as though he might have something to say on the matter. The pilot slowly lifted a finger and pointed to the binding on his face.
“Morris here can’t do much talking for the next few days, unless he wants to tear that mess back open. If he’d like to assume command after that, he’s more than welcome.” Carillo answered, and Morris shook his head. He was out of his depth, he didn’t know what he was doing, and when the adrenaline wore off he was sure he’d be reduced to a shivering mess. The troopers gave a few chuckles to distract themselves from their grim work, and he staggered back into the cockpit.
Blankly he looked about the ruined space, absently collecting the ammunition Steiner had stored for the shotgun before he forced himself to look at the lifeless corpse. There had been a small flicker of hope that when he turned to his friend, he might’ve found him sitting upright smiling wide, or at least seen he draw a ragged breath, but there was nothing. The man was still, his pulse gone, and soon he would grow cold.
All of this had been Morris’ idea, the two of them had graduated college and chosen Naval Aviation at his own pushing instead of pursuing careers. There had been the promise of adventure, the hope that it would impress the right girl, which it had, and a dozen other upsides that he’d argued. Somehow he’d been sure that he and Steiner would never see combat, that they’d be safe. Instead, the friend who’d toasted him at his wedding, the brother that he’d never had, was still and gone. 
He pulled the dog tags from his brother and turned away knowing he’d never see him again. He blinked away tears and grabbed the recorder from where he left it. Some part of him wondered if he’d have been better off leaving it. If someone found it and he didn’t make it, maybe it was better she thought that he met his end bravely.
Shame hit him hard, for daring to think the love of his life would’ve ever been that vain. It didn’t matter how he died, she’d be furious that he never came back to her, and nothing else. He’d have abandoned her. Taking the recording device in his hands he stared at it for a minute, torn between leaving it and taking it, but when the moment came his fingers seemed to move without his consent, and deleted the device’s contents.
He’d tell her everything he’d said in person, he decided.
“Hey, pilot!” One of the troopers called, Taggert. “Staff Sarge says we’re ‘movin. C'mon.” 
There had been a playful, almost mocking edge to the ODSTs voice before, but either his comrades had given him a verbal lashing, or the reality of Morris’ situation had dawned on him. It was never the pilots who survived these sorts of things, maybe a grunt or two crawled out to fight another day, but never the people like him.
It was all wrong, and they knew it. Their stares were hidden behind mirrored purple-blue visors, but he felt them all the same. Bentley Morris tried to put on a hard face, but it only made the pain flare up. As he winced his eyes fell, and he saw who the earlier scream must’ve come from.
She hadn’t been much older than him, she might have even been younger, but she’d remain that age forever now regardless. Strands of thin dark hair were loose over her dark brown skin, and eyes the shade of oak stared up at the bright blue sky, seemingly fixated on something beyond the ring. 
Her name had been Parvati Kapoor, as he’d come to learn, she’d joined up the day she turned 18 to try and provide for two younger brothers after their parents had died in a glassing. And to get revenge, though apparently, she’d refused to acknowledge that for a long time, because it wouldn’t have been what her folks wanted. She’d been funny, too smart to be a jarhead, and the meanest cards player in their whole battalion.
Morris didn’t know any of that as he watched Carrillo pull her tags, Huang gently closed her eyes for the final time, and Jacinto rig an M9 under her arms to give whatever alien freak that tried to turn her corpse into a meal a nasty surprise. Even without knowing her, it still felt like something had been carved out of him because certainly, she’d deserved better than to die on account of someone like him.
They were all quiet for what felt like a long time, and then they were moving. Around the mountain, slow and steady, ducking Banished patrols and watching the skies for any sign of human triumph. They never found any, and as night came, they found nothing but more catastrophe.