Halo: Remnants

== Chapter 1 ==
March 12th, 2537, 22:15 Hrs
Vision, Zeta-Byzantium system
-Grizzly Team-
The gentle wind rustled through the long, vibrant grass in a sweeping current. The calm waves lapped at the edges of solitary rocks like water, a still calm settling over the field. Above the pinpricks of light from the orbital battle danced across the inky blackness. Had it been under better circumstances, Ayrton-A384 would have considered it to be a pleasant evening outing with his team. But with Grizzly Team, there was nothing pleasant about any of their ‘outings’.
"This place really is a dump!" Thom-A293 remarked, shattering the silence as they advanced across the landscape, prompting Ayrton to silently roll his eyes in reply. Only a few days previously Grizzly Team and the other Alpha Company commandos had been deployed to the beleaguered planet of Vision. A rather small and at a first glance, unimportant human colony, but one which possessed one of the largest production centres for UNSC aircraft in the outer colonies. Hence the deployment of the commandos. “I mean, yeah, factories are important, but why are we out here instead of helping with evacuating them?” he added, kicking a chunk of the sandy earth to illustrate his point.
“Because command wants us to put them on the defensive, and give us time to breathe before they realize it’s just us, a Marine division, plus whatever the Navy's got left that's protecting this rock,” Ayrton replied as he led Grizzly team into a corpse of thick trees.
“Yeah, but they just sent us and Colt, I mean Carter could’ve at least sent us more backup,” Thom noted as the team walked amongst knotted and exposed tree roots, being careful not to put their weight on any of the dried branches that littered the ground.
“Because that's all he could spare, we’re not with the main company anymore,” Rosenda-A344, retorted as she hopped over a small ditch. Her SPI armour made her appear only as a wraith to anyone looking that didn’t have one of the Spartan’s HUD systems.
“What Roz said, now we’re meant to be keeping quiet, so let's not talk unless we have to,” Ayrton ordered, prompting a snort from Thom, but nothing more as the squad continued in silence. Thom was the youngest member of the squad and its most vocal member, often the cause of many arguments amongst the other Spartans. A trait that had ended a potential career as a headhunter, but whose natural skill had earned him a place in the commandos. Rosenda on the other hand was Ayrton’s official right hand on Grizzly, a spot that she had naturally gravitated towards during basic.
A soft crack to Ayrton’s left set his training into motion, immediately dropping to his knee, and had just about brought his MA5K to bear, when he found he was pointing his weapon at the fourth member of the squad, Beth-A173. Whom Ayrton knew from experience was currently wearing an expression best described as ‘deer in headlights’ beneath her mirrored visor. Calmly Ayrton lowered his weapon before cocking his head to one side and shrugging his shoulders as a form of silent apology. Mercifully Beth snapped out of the shock of having her three teammates pointing weapons at her, and replied with a quick nod before continuing as though nothing had happened. Beth was the quiet member of the squad, and was effectively Thom’s opposite. She was also Ayrton's oldest friend, the two’s relationship having predated the Spartan-III program, the only reminder that they had had lives before the covenant had shown up and destroyed them.
Originally, Grizzly had been just him, Beth and Rosenda. The latter had at first not gotten along with either of them. Though with time, the grueling training and the ire of the DI’s and Mendez had moulded the three war orphans into a highly effective team. Effective enough to be selected to be one of Alpha company’s six elite Commando teams, often being referred to as either Commando’s or Cat-2’s, short for Category 2, the official term to differentiate from the regular Category 1 Spartan-III’s. Thom had only joined the team during the final months of their training, and effort by Lieutenant Ambrose to give the commando teams additional firepower, using failed Headhunter candidates such as Thom to fill the need.
As the began ascending a steep hill, Ayrton stole a glance at the GPS on his wrist, noting that they were still a full kilometre away from their destination. A valley near the centre of a five kilometre dead zone, the purpose of which was unknown. All that they knew was that there had been a large amount of Covenant aerial traffic into and out of the zone, though little of it was heading to their main base located thirty kilometres further south. Out of the gloom ahead a rocky cliff face emerged, easily sixty feet in height, its timeworn grey facade jutting out like a giant wall across the landscape.
"Roz, Beth stay here and watch for Covie's, Thom with me," Ayrton commanded as he leapt onto the cliff and began to climb, using the natural hand and foot holds to ascend the face like it was a ladder, silently thankful for his training. Beneath him, he heard Thom following in his wake, as Rosenda and Beth scanned the cliff top and the route behind them, fingers resting on their triggers. Finally Ayrton poked his head above the cliff edge, and seeing all was quiet, hauled himself up onto a rocky plateau before reaching back down to help Thom up, before flashing a green signal to the rest of Grizzly, who in-turn began their ascent under their watch.
"Compared to what Mendez put us through, that was easy!" Rosenda smirked as she clambered onto the clifftop, followed by Beth who simply gave the signature Spartan smile of two fingered swipe across her faceplate.
"Yeah, I swear Mendez deliberately had most of the hand holds removed just to make it more difficult, and lets not forget when the DI's shot at us if we took to long," Ayrton replied as Grizzly moved away from the cliff edge in a rough arrowhead formation, once more scanning all directions for contacts.
"Eh, it was worse for us Headhunters, they weakened some of the handholds so we'd fall if we chose wrong," Thom added as he rested his MA5K on his shoulder. Ayrton didn't know whether to believe Thom about that, as it was well known that most Headhunter's tended to exaggerate the strenuousness of their training, though he couldn't be certain either way, after all this was Mendez they were dealing with. Either way he kept his opinion silent as they moved into a grassy prairie in silence.
"Contact, three o'clock," Beth said quickly, breaking the silence. Causing the entire team to drop instantly, there wasn't anything on their sensors yet, but each of them knew from practice that if Beth said she saw a contact, they listened to her. Seconds later a squad of around ten grunts led by an Elite minor emerged out of the gloom, crossing right across their path of advance. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Thom reach for his combat knife and quickly flashed him an amber signal, telling him to hold his position. He knew they could easily take the Covenant patrol before they'd have known what was happening, but it wasn't worth telegraphing their presence for a bunch of Grunts and an Elite when there were potentially richer pickings elsewhere. Finally the patrol moved out of sight, and after checking for any stragglers, Grizzly moved on, becoming acutely aware of an ominous purple glow on the horizon.
"Looks like we're getting close," Thom noted obviously as they began ascending once more. Another glance at the GPS map revealed they were indeed, roughly where the NAV marker was set. Dropping back to a crawl, the squad inched their way towards the crest of the slope, still acutely aware of the presence of prying alien eyes.
"Alright, what do we have," Ayrton muttered as he crawled to the very edge of the cliff. Beneath him a sprawling camp lay out across the valley floor, with dome-like structures in familiar purple metallic metal standing in a line on the far side. Nearer the middle of the base were what appeared to be landing pads, with Grunts milling around as if waiting for a purpose, at the centre of which a pylon stood on tripod legs, energy pulsing from an assembly at its top. The most striking building was a cylindrical tower that jutted out above the base, flanked by two barn-like structures on either side. Its windowless facade and its rounded top made it look to Ayrton as if someone had jammed one of Mendez's Sweet Williams into the ground after covering it in purple paint. Strangely an ominous glow seemed to emanate from a hole in the ground, whatever was in it being hidden by its depth but its importance was significant by the stacks of crates surrounding the slope down into it.
"Other than the grunts in the open, I'm seeing a load more going into those dome things, so I'd say those are barracks," Thom noted as a Phantom flew in from further up the valley, landing on one of the pads before being beset by Grunts who began hauling crates from its troop bay to the barn structures.
"The stores look like they're next to the tower, which if I'd have to guess looks like their HQ," Ayrton surmised, before quickly checking to see his helmet was recording what he was seeing for future reference. "That pylon looks like the cause of our dead zone if its looks are anything to go by, so taking that out should clear our comms," he added as he looked for an optimal method to take the pylon out.
"Perimeter patrol's look like the usual Grunt and Elite combination, I've got a few Jackal's scattered around keeping watch, but that hole and the tower are unknowns," Rosenda cautioned. Just because they couldn't see Hunters or Brutes didn't mean there weren't any.
"I've got a couple of burned out buildings to the west of the camp," Beth stated out of the blue, causing Ayrton to shoot his friend a sideways glance at the oddness of her statement. Beth, however, simply stared back at him before continuing, "Might give us some cover to approach from," she explained, suddenly making her comment make sense.
“Well at least we’ve got that going for us…” Ayrton mused as he watched one of the grunts stumble, only for its commanding elite to shove it back amongst its kin. Something about this scene didn’t sit right with him; there was too much infrastructure here to justify such a small garrison for its defence. Then there was the hole, a hole that wasn’t marked on his GPS, and that for no known reason was lighting up the local area like it was being floodlit.
“We haven’t got enough firepower between us and Colt to hit this place, and I don’t wanna go in on anything less than certain,” Ayrton stated as he checked his helmet's camera was recording everything he was seeing. “Get shots of everything before we head for the RV with Colt, we’ll go over everything there before we call Carter for backup,” he added. It was largely redundant as he trusted his team to do their jobs, but it was always worth repeating.
“You sure? We can get through this lot without much trouble, even without Colt,” Thom countered.
“It's not what we can see that's the issue, it's what we can’t, and I don’t want us going into a world of unknowns without enough firepower to turn them into meaty colanders,” Ayrton replied, neither annoyed at Thom questioning his orders, nor amused at having to explain the reasoning behind it. Whilst always eager for a scrap, Thom lacked the necessary strategic view for command, a deficiency that Ayrton assumed was one of the reasons Thom had been dropped from the Headhunter program. “Besides, can’t let us have all the fun,” he added as crawled back from the cliff edge.
Thom just grunted at this notion, instead falling in line as Ayrton led his team back towards the cliff in silence. It was going to be a long night.