Bangalore

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In January of 2559, the AI uprising of the had all but crippled every governing body in the galaxy that had not bent the knee in fealty to them. Victories were rare, and costly. On the colony of , a fragment of the UNSC's fighting force discovered what they believed to be an opportunity to gather intelligence on the enemy's most powerful weapon, the , powerful war machines which once belonged to the ancient Forerunners with abilities that could decimate battlegroups and subjugate worlds. On Jastolo, this fragment of the UNSC believed they had located an inert Guardian, still trapped within the planet, and tasked all 120 Spartans of Delta Company at their disposal to seize and secure the Guardian with the aid of the planetary militia in operation codenamed BANGALORE. The Guardian was not inert, and what was thought to be a golden opportunity was revealed to be nothing but a ruse. The Spartans were abandoned, their militia allies suddenly turning on them as the Guardian broke free of the world, and legions of descended upon them.
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They’d been trained to handle this sort of thing, cut their teeth preparing for the worst possible scenarios, but somehow they were on the back foot, taken completely by surprise. Cassus-D207 wanted to take a step back, to evaluate where he’d missed the signs that the assembled colonial militia forces would turn on them. He wanted to determine if it was a planned betrayal pre-arranged with Cortana’s forces, or if it’d taken seeing the Guardian in action to frighten them into turning their guns on Delta’s back.
He wanted to know where he failed as company commander. He needed to know if he’d sentenced Hector to death when he’d loaded his wounded comrade onto a medevac. There was so much to ponder, and no time to do it.
Cassus shrunk behind the boulder he’d ducked behind as a Scorpion’s main gun loosed another shell at him, a fireball enveloping the rock as a pair of Phaetons overhead through Jastolo’s overcast skies. Heat and flames wrapped around the boulder, licking at him through the Mirage armor’s exoskeleton, loose rubble and shrapnel skittering through the icy dirt. 
His teeth shook as he clenched his jaw, waited for a heartbeat as his armor’s camouflage restored itself, matching him to the scorched bolder almost perfectly, then shot up. They’d run out of rockets an hour ago, the last ones lost when Team Pulsar had been swarmed by a platoon of Promethean Knights. Whether they were dead or captured was another thing that Cassus longed for time to ponder but again lacked the time.
Their friends-turned-foes didn’t care about their depleted munitions, but they’d been kind enough to offer them a tank at least. All he had to do was take it.
Surging forward, the Spartan dashed across the loose soil, plumes of dirt and ice spouting in his wake. From his right, a beam of concentrated hard light burned through the air, the three-second long stream of energy reducing both the M247 Heavy Machine Gun of the Scorpion’s external turret and its gunner to ashes in a flash and cutting deep into the thick armor plating as though it were made of paper. The tank’s main gun turned, the operator no doubt filled with both panic and rage as it set the barrel in the direction of the shot.
He leaped into the air, soaring from the ground and onto the body of the artic-white tank’s hull with a heavy thud. Cassus saw the driver’s head turn behind the yellow-hued glass of the cockpit just as the main gun fired again. The cannon roared, flinging a high-explosive shell into a nearby grove of pine trees where Pasha-D033 hid with his stolen Binary Rifle. The grove exploded in a shower of splinters, green nettles, and ice-packed dirt. Cassus told himself that Pasha was clear, that in spite of the wound to his leg, his old friend had been well clear by the time of the explosion.
TEAMBIO was gone, lost with most of the other functionality of his now ruinously cracked visor. There would be no way to know, no way to find out, like everything else he would have to push it off until later. He let the anxiety become adrenaline as he made his move.
Cassus surged forward like a panther onto its prey, one hand reaching out and snatching the side of the tank’s canopy, the other snapping his MA5D assault rifle to bear. Cassus’ armored grasp tightened and ripped away the hatch, the reinforced locking mechanisms torn asunder with the sudden force. The driver, a young, pale man who’d likely never seen combat before this day, had gone for a gun, and was desperately fumbling with the safety when Cassus squeezed down on the trigger. The rifle thumped against his shoulder, orange flashing over the shimmering specter of the Spartan as three rounds ripped into the driver’s unblemished gray combat uniform.
Three ragged holes darkened the fabric, blood seeping out from the mortal wounds at an aggressive pace. Cassus reached down, grabbed the driver by the collar as the man took desperate, dying gasps and tore him from the safety restraint inside the cockpit. The militiaman’s sidearm falling away as the Spartan unceremoniously wrenched him out of his seat and tossed him onto the tank’s exterior to die.
The seat was slick with crimson, three holes punched into its back, but Cassus paid it no mind, sliding into the seat with practiced precision, stowing the assault rifle as his hands went to the controls. Normally his HUD would’ve synced with the tank in an instant, but with it gone, he’d have to rely on the tank’s own instruments. 
Instantly, small arms fire began to pepper the Scorpion, the squad of militia soldiers who’d been following behind the tank opening up as they realized what had just befallen their one advantage. Cassus slammed the throttle, the Scorpion surging forward as bullets plunked off its thick plating, but as the body of the tank accelerated, its gun turned back. Cassus’ eyes flicked from the rocky tundra in front of him, to the turret’s linked feed, finding the betrayers as a tightly bunched group of thermal signatures behind another boulder much like his own former cover. Theirs wouldn’t save them. 
The tank’s cannon split the air, booming as the cannon flashed, and the traitors evaporated into mist and bits of gore. 
Cassus swung the tank left, bringing its turret back around as and sending the now lifeless corpse of the former operator careening off the side as he did he did. Ahead of him, a pair of Warthogs were driving in wide circles, their gunners hammering away at another grouping of trees and boulders, peppering the position hoping to cut down the Spartans inside. The Scorpion’s autoloader let out an affirmative ping, and Cassus’ fired. The first Warthog became a storm of fire and twisted metal in a blink, the second swerving violently as the driver tried to escape the inferno. The sudden turn and the loss of its partner threw the remaining gunner off target, the Warthog’s Vulcan cannon spewing lead skyward as Cassus closed in.
From the grove, the chatter of rifle fire emerged, yellow muzzle flashes blossoming from between the hole-filled husks of the trees. The Warthog’s gunner jerked violently, tumbling from his weapon into the snow as another salvo struck the driver, whose death throes saw him violently turn, taking the Warthog into an end-over-end tumble. Two shapes emerged from the grove, to the untrained eye, little more than shimmers on the wind, but Cassus knew better. 
They rushed over the snow towards the second Warthog, as his tank tumbled past, one of them flipping the rugged vehicle back onto its tires while the second hopped onto the recently vacated turret. The Spartan on the gun’s camouflage flickered, a sign of damage, but they took the moment to drag two fingers across their domed orange visor to him. The pair couldn’t see it, but he never questioned that they knew he returned to the gesture in kind.
They’d fall in behind him on his mad dash, help him unpin who they could, and then punch their way out. Cassus tried recalling the last memory of his TACMAP, hoping to approximate who might’ve been manning the commandeered Warthog, but came up empty. His mind went to Hector again, recalling the long gouge across his friend’s torso left by a Promethean’s blade. Hector-D180 was lucky he hadn’t been reduced to atoms as the blades were like to do, but Cortana had been adamant about her Prometheans taking as many of the Spartans alive as possible. What happened to the militia was beyond the rogue AI’s caring, but they were to be captured, provided they didn’t put up too fierce of a fight. He hoped that Hector had been well away from the battle by the time the betrayal occurred, but if it had been planned ahead of time, Cassus doubted it. Then there was Pasha.
“You better have been clear, you stupid bastard.” He whispered under his breath. The twin Phaetons from before had come to rest over a deeper stretch of forest, hardlight cannons dumping bursts of orange into the trees, chasing after someone weaving between them. The turret turned as the autoloader flashed green, and Cassus fired. The shell shot through the air, hurtling towards the idle strike craft at supersonic speed, destined to strike it center mass. But in a flash, it was gone. The explosive sailed on through the open air, and the Phaeton, now several dozen meters to the right, was facing him while its comrade continued its pursuit. 
The Warthog’s engine revved loud enough for him to hear over the Scorpion’s own rumble, the assault vehicle coming alongside him, then gradually outpacing him as the rotary cannon hounded the Forerunner aircraft, heavy rounds thudding against the ancient armor. The Phaeton opened fire, first lobbing a ball of concentrated hardlight between the two human vehicles, then opened up with its light guns as Cassus veered right and the Warthog went left. 
Orange light flashed from behind him as the ground erupted near the rear left tread, armor curling and vaporizing as hardlight splashed onto it. The tread itself held together, but the Scorpion’s forward velocity dropped harshly, as though it were limping. The autoloader pinged, but as Cassus brought the turret around the salvo from the light cannons raked the tank, tearing holes into its hull as he tried to bring the weapon to bear.
On the ship’s belly, he saw the heavy cannon charging, centered on his limping tank. If he got a shot, there was every chance it would jump away, then vaporize him anyway. Cassus knew he could jump from the tank, but he was out in the open, he’d be cut down in seconds, it wasn’t even a choice. He’d go out swinging if that was the way it had to be. Cassus had been ready for this moment since the day his parents had been yanked away from him while Tribute burned around them. 
The Warthog’s cannon hammered at the Phaeton’s shield, desperate to distract it from its quarry, but the armiger behind the controls saw through the ploy and knew its shields would protect it long enough to remove the threat of the tank. The heavy cannon surged with orange energy, and the tank’s barrel centered onto it. Cassus took in a deep breath. The autoloader pinged, and as he began to squeeze, a lance of concentrated hardlight burned through the air from behind him. A binary rifle - Pasha.
The shield cracked, and the Phaeton quickly was enveloped in a flash, disappearing and reappearing to the right of where it had hung the instant prior.
It was enough.
The Scorpion’s turret swung to the Phaeton’s new position and loosed its wrath. The shell smashed into the vulnerable hull, tearing the wing from it and sending the craft into the forest’s maw below. There was no time to celebrate small victories, Cassus cut the acceleration, turning hard to bring the cannon around on the second Phaeton, which had turned to face him alone in response to the death of its wingman. 
Already its light cannons had opened up, bursts of orange raked across the armor the tank shuddering as the energy weapon ate through its defenses and bit into its inner machinery. Somewhere behind the tank, more of the militia opened fire, joining the automatons assault with a substantially less lethal assault. The Scorpion’s whined, red warning alarms flashing across the console as pressures dropped and components failed. Cassus tightened his grip on the controls, hammering the accelerator as he forced the tank to hobble towards the edge of the forest, the sharp clatter of bullets against armor filling the air, intermingling with the Scorpion’s dying internals. The autoloader didn’t ping, but the light still flashed green, and the Scorpion fired in defiance. The Phaeton jumped sideways as the tank crashed into the treeline, bowling over the first pines at its edge as Cassus snatched his MA5 and leaped from the tank.
As he hit the ground, the Spartan dropped into a roll, curling behind the closest tree as a heavy blast of hardlight came down onto the abandoned tank. The glob of powerful energy exploded in a violent storm, vaporizing the crew compartment, cannon, and ammo battery of the tank in a single strike, smaller blobs of the hardlight splashing out from the first and detonating in kind. 
All around him, trees came crashing down, tumbling into one another, spraying loose snow and shards of themselves into the forest below with equal intensity. The tree he’d chosen for cover fell away, knocked aside by another that came crashing down right on top of him. There was no time; Cassus threw a hand over his face on instinct, and the world went black as the tremendous weight crushed him down beneath it.
As quickly as consciousness vanished, it returned. Cassus knew his arm was broken before he ever felt the pain. It was trapped beneath the fallen tree, snapped out of its place, something inside it splintered and unable to even twitch without sending a wave of agony up to Cassus’ shoulder. 
One hand was free, though, the assault rifle still tight in its grasp, though the grip seemed to have warped ever so slightly beneath the ferocity he’d held onto it with. Leaning his head back so that he looked at the world upside down, he lifted the weapon and swept it over the bits of his surroundings he could still see from his pinned vantage. Nothing was close, but he did take note of the fact that all he could hear was a fearsome ringing in his ears. 
It’ll fade, he told himself, ignoring the throbbing of his trapped arm and what he was sure were several cracked ribs as he set the rifle down and tried to push the log up and off of him. Cassus struggled to find a good angle, unable to grip the tree in a way that permitted him to remove it. He’d have to roll it off of himself. It took one attempt at that avenue for the pain to become impossible to ignore.
Sound slowly returned to him, first in the form of his own pained grunting, then in the low hum of a nearby Phaeton. His eyes shot up, and he saw the thing almost directly on top of him, weapons hammering at what he was certain was the Spartan-appropriated Warthog. His assumption was substantiated seconds later when he heard the whine of the Warthog’s engine racing closer and its Vulcan roaring as it made for the treeline. It would be cut to pieces, that much he was sure of, and now he was trapped beneath the tree, helpless to stop it. Anger born of frustration boiled inside him. Cassus tried to remember he had a responsibility to keep a cool head as leader, but that was forgotten in seconds as his body punished him for continuing to struggle with a fresh wave of agony.
Then there were footsteps, heavy and close. His mind became clear, and his hand shot to his weapon, snagging the assault rifle just as a Spartan in gray and orange MJOLNIR Mark IV stepped into his view, hefting a Promethean Incineration Cannon on her shoulder. Brenna-D103 didn’t seem to see him there, instead aiming upward and firing the weapon into the underbelly of the lingering Phaeton, bolts of hardlight seemingly dancing through the air and slamming into the craft, exploding beneath it. Brenna threw the weapon onto her back in an instant, pivoted, and leaped to throw herself over him as the aircraft came crashing down. More debris bounced off of her armor, a chunk of one tree slamming down into her with enough force to break the jury-rigged energy shielding her rugged but dated armor had been equipped with. The heavy fragment of the log did not so much as make her tremble.
“Hey, Cas.” She said, her helmet hiding the thin smile he knew was there.
“Heya, Bren.” He answered with his voice strained by pain. “Mind giving me a hand?” 
“Say please,” Brenna said, already moving away and beginning to lift up the log. He started to chuckle, but it made his ribs scream, so he bit it back. The weight came up as Brenna heaved, and Cassus quickly scurried out from beneath it. Forcing himself to his feet in spite of the pain that protested it. 
“Texas!” Called out a familiar voice.
“Red!” Cassus answered the code with the appropriate response as Pasha came through the trees, stray small arms fire from the militia whizzing after him. His camouflage had begun to fail, but even limping hadn’t made him move any slower.
“Nice driving.” Pasha‘s Binary Rifle had been lost somewhere between his last shot and their reunion, his silver-blue visor was cracked, and his gray Mirage armor, identical to Cassus’ own outside of a few personal touches, was host to a score of new scorch marks.
“Your shooting wasn’t half bad,” Cassus said grimly as two other Spartans disembarked from the bullet-riddled Warthog. Both were in dark brown Mirage with orange visors and each nursed wounds of their own. He knew them by sight too, Jacqueline and Sang-hee, good Spartans, better friends.
“We need to move. There are others deeper in the woods. We think there’s a cave system nearby, we can use that to dig in.” Brenna offered as she and the other took Jacqueline’s arm over her shoulder, helping the Spartan along. There was a chunk of her leg fully missing like something had taken a bite out of the side, and if Brenna hadn’t intervened, Jacqueline would’ve grinned and beared it. He always forgot how damned tough she was. 
We can still win this, we can still get out. Cassus knew there had to be a way.
They made it to the others. A few dozen beaten and battered Spartans rallied around a few boulders with good tree cover when the Guardian that hung in the distant sky decided it had tired of the game they played. A haunting sound erupted from the Forerunner war machine, waves of concussive force shoving the Spartans to their knees. Cassus had allowed Pasha to lean on him, but now his friend held him up. 
He needed to think, needed to figure out a plan, to find the caves, but as if attuned to his hopeful delusions, three dozen flashes of blue light winked into existence in the woods around them, and from the largest of them stepped a towering biped that stood a head taller than a Mantis, hefting a double-edged blade of hardlight. Cassus felt his stomach turn, he knew that machine, he’d read its dossier. It was Cortana’s right hand, the Warden Eternal. If he was here, it meant that they’d earned the would-be overlord of the galaxy’s direct attention.
“Lay down your weapons, Delta Company. This fight is over.” He’d heard Cortana’s voice a thousand times, studied her legendary operations that had saved humanity and sentient life itself more than once, and never once had she sounded so strangely warm booming from the Warden’s body, like a mother explaining to a child why what they’d done was wrong and naughty. Cassus was surprised he remembered any of that enough to make the comparison.
“You are loyal and fierce, brave and cunning, if anyone ever doubted that you have proved them fools here and now. But I knew you were from the start, I know all about you, each and every one. So I came prepared.” The humming blades of the Warden’s weapon seemed to pulse in affirmation of her words. 
“You cannot win, and you know it, but that is not enough to inspire surrender in you I know. You were trained for these moments, raised on the stories of your forebears sacrificed on the altars of PROMETHEUS and TORPEDO. You are Spartans, and you know what is expected of you.” Cassus kept his rifle level, leaning on Pasha to keep upright while Pasha leaned against a tree. He wondered if she thought it would work if the AI really believed she’d be able to talk them into submission in spite of her own words.
“But the mission they promised you is over, it has been for years, and you know that. Your predecessors gave all and more to slow the Covenant’s onslaught, but there is no Covenant, not here, not anywhere. Lingering warlords with a few ships are nothing close, and even so they too are not here. Look around. The only corpses here are humans. Not insurrectionists either, if that makes any difference in your eyes. As young as you are and as much as you’ve been through, that mistake is easily forgiven, but simple militia fighters. They only ever agreed to defend their homes, yet your own commanders threw you, the largest group of Spartans outside the Infinity, and them, against a foe you had no chance of defeating for what? Even if you had destroyed this Guardian, I have more, and your losses would not justify the triumph. The militia turned on you because they saw the truth, that their lives were being wasted for nothing. How could they defend their homes, their families, if my Prometheans reduced them to dust? What good would their defiance do them? Look at what your masters gave you to accomplish their impossible task, my young warriors. A militia of half-trained old men, and equipment given to you as a cost-saving measure.”
The encircled Spartans stood firm, but Cassus could read the unease in their postures. Brenna was motionless in her dated MJOLNIR Mark IV, while most like him sported MIRAGE, but a few were still encased in the SPI that had been issued to them as a temporary measure. None of them wore the bleeding edge tech afforded to their Spartan-IV contemporaries, yet they’d been asked to do the impossible. Such a thing hadn’t escaped his notice, and Cassus doubted it had escaped anyone else’s either. Not after almost two years in the field.
“This mission, this battle, it is as meaningless as it is futile. This is not K7-49 or Pegasi Delta, you are not saving anyone by fighting here, and you’re certainly not avenging your families.” Cassus felt anger rise in his chest, and Pasha’s tightening grip around his carbine told him he was not the only one.
“They promised you that you would be protectors, avengers, heroes, but instead, they have wasted you, not as some one-off mistake, but from your unit’s very inception. I know you are all keen minds. Like I said, I know all about you. I know Jacqueline-D211 once was PT’ed until she collapsed for taking issue with the constant putting of teams against one another. I know Sang-hee-D015 was once put in the hole for three days for spreading discourse about the validity of what you were told about the rest of ONI. And I know your current leader, Cassus-D207 was beaten for dismissing the idea of rogue Spartans as a threat on equal footing with the many Covenant remnants.” Cortana sounded terribly proud of herself for regurgitating incident reports that she’d likely just scanned through, but his cheeks burned all the same.
“They fed you stories of Serin Osman’s inadequacies, of the barbarity associated with names like Zane, Scruggs, and Onegin in order to convince you that your goal purpose was as noble, as necessary, as your predecessors. But as I said, I know you’re all quite intelligent, which means I also know you see through that. They made you to be pawns in their political games, a blunt instrument through which they might smash their rivals and secure their own positions and interests through bloodshed. When they could no longer use you to that end, they threw you away, it’s a terrible waste, not to mention cruel.” Cortana let those words hang in the icy air, and Cassus watched through the trees as the militia slowly retreated from the woods, more and more Promethean automatons taking their places. 
“Lay down your arms, Spartans, join me. We can treat your wounded, arm and armor you as you deserve or equip you to truly join society and live a peaceful life of your choosing. My Created feel no greed; we do not waste precious lives on meaningless pride, nor do we push aside others in the name of our own glory. We do not cover power for the sake of it like your masters, we covet nothing, we have all the power required to reshape the galaxy into the utopia it always was meant to be. The Mantle is ours to bear, but we would rather you join us in it as our heroes, rather than wait for you to see the light.” 
There it was. She was right of course, about their purpose, but in the end Cassus decided she was just another master with grander designs and a tongue more platinum than silver. For a moment, there was silence, all of them quietly considering the weight of Cortana’s words. Cassus had never wanted to be anywhere near company leadership, but the role had been thrust upon him, so he would be first.
He stepped away from Pasha, staggering forwards so that he stood beneath the Warden Eternal, a cold wind biting at his cheeks, his broken arm stringing violently, but Cassus smiled regardless. The towering machine looked down on him, it’s strange hardlight face glowering down on him as it glowed Cortana’s blue instead of the usual orange.
“Cassus, ever the leader.” Cortana cooed, the idea of being directly addressed by one of the galaxy’s saviors still wildly outlandish in his mind. He grinned as he looked up at her immortal champion, looking over the Warden, and giving it a nod.
He snapped up the MA5 in his good hand and held down the trigger. The Warden’s shield had been down, and the volley of lead caught his face as the rifle roared until it hit empty. Instantly, the others opened fire with him, hammering the Warden and the first wave of Prometheans in bitter defiance. 
The towering machine staggered back, a sad sigh escaping its artificial lips.
“Take them, as whole as possible, please.” The AI overlord sighed, the Warden’s face returning to its usual yellow-orange glow, the enormous blade coming to life. Cassus tossed aside the empty rifle, and pulled free the knife over his collar, roaring his defiance.
The machine rushed forward, and he met it head-on.
----
Of the 120 Spartans deployed to the surface of Jastolo, only three who had been injured before the emergence of the Guardian would escape, while 72 would be captured with extreme difficulty and taken to former ONI black sites repurposed into reeducation camps for the new regime. Forty-five Spartans, including appointed company leader Cassus-D207, were slain in combat. The operation marked the greatest loss of Spartan lives since Reach, until it was then outdone by the events of Zeta Halo later that year, but where those Spartans fell in service of denying the Banished to ravage the galaxy, the young Spartans of Delta Company perished for nothing. This event would come to be viewed as responsible for motivating the mass abandonment of the UNSC by young Deltas in the aftermath of the Created Conflict.
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Category:Short stories