The Sacrifice of Corporal Aldridge

“Tell them to make it count.”
Corporal Aldridge had once thought that spartans never died, but glancing from the doorway he was watching towards the lone figure standing by the energy shielded hanger door, he knew the truth. The motionless spartan seemed to be saying something to himself. Aldridge turned back toward the door as he thought about their position. It had been a high-risk mission, and his squad had been chosen for it on the fly as they were the only EVA certified squad on Anchor-9. It had been simple enough; infiltrate the corvette, leave the pelican with the makeshift bomb behind, send it towards the supercarrier, and watch the fireworks. No one had counted on the detonator getting hit by stray plasma during the firefight to secure the hanger. They had no other options. The spartan had volunteered to stay behind and detonate it. Aldridge had no choice. In his basic environmentally sealed suit, he had roughly thirty minutes of air, but he’d need more than that to survive an impromptu re-entry like the other spartan most likely would. This wasn’t a choice he could’ve made. Call it fate, or bad luck, he was dying here today.
The imposing figure turned from the hanger door and picked up his helmet from where he had dropped it. Aldridge could only imagine what he was thinking. 
“You heard what I told him.”
The spartan gestured towards the hanger door.
“The timer is done. Only way to send these bastards off as we planned is to manually detonate it.
There was a pause.
“I’m sorry to do this to you”
His heavy old earth Russian accent laid a more human blanket over the stoic spartan. Aldridge had only seen them fully armored, with thick layers of composite armor and energy shielding blocking in all emotion and keeping the outside world out. It was a rather alien feeling, knowing that behind all the armor and god knows what else, there was a human in the giant.
Aldridge shrugged in an unconvincing effort to show indifference.
“I don’t have a choice, so there’s no use complaining.” said the marine. “Besides, this way I get a better view of the fireworks.”
The spartan grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
Aldridge turned back towards the door as the spartan sealed his helmet and picked up the chain gun he always seemed to have. They had killed off most of the corvettes crew in their raid on the bridge to set the refueling course, but they hadn’t bothered to clear the rest of the ship. There wasn’t a need at the time. Now, as a side door opened and a squad of grunts and jackals emerged, Aldridge wished they would’ve taken the time.
The last of the casings from Aldridges’s MA37 hit the ground, and he peeked around the corner of the control panel he was using as cover in time to see the last grunt topple to the ground, the spartans chain gun still smoking. Checking his remaining ammo, he ducked into the pelican and surveyed the crates inside. They had brought several resupply cases along, in case of a prolonged firefight being necessary. He surveyed the contents of one as he replaced a grenade on his belt. In it lay three M392 rifles, two M6G sidearms, a dozen or so boxes of ammo for both, and three frag grenades, as well as a medkit. They didn’t have long until the corvette met the supercarrier, so he was confident the supplies would last.
What Aldridge wasn’t confident in was whether or not he would last. He had been in his fair share of deadly fights; hell, he’d been on Sigma Octanus IV when that mess happened, not to mention the last week on Reach. Through those battles he’d always had his squad and support from nearby assets, which admittedly were often limited to a few extra grenades. Looking back on this, Aldridge realized he’d never been in a fight to the death before. Not like this. Either he was going to die, or that damned supercarrier was going to die and take him with it. Regardless of this outcome, there was no way he or the spartan would be leaving. He didn’t have any backup. He didn’t have any pelicans waiting for extraction. He had himself, a few rifles, and a spartan, all waiting for the void.
Waiting behind the pelican’s landing gear for the next wave of intruders, he contemplated his life, looking for regrets. There were always some, Aldridge knew. He wasn’t leaving family behind; his had died on Harvest. He hadn’t married, although he wasn’t sure if there weren’t some kids of his running around on some forsaken backwater colony he’d been dumped on for leave. They wouldn’t have known him, and probably wouldn’t have missed him, he thought to himself. 
As Aldridge tried to recall something he’d change if he could, he realized there wasn’t much. He shrugged. That usually meant you had a good life. Still, it didn’t seem right to him. There were of course the various friends and teammates he’d seen slashed down the middle by an energy sword, or carbonized by one of those wraith tanks, or else simply eaten by the scores of ever present jackals. He was surprised when he came to the conclusion that, despite losing people he would’ve liked to live, he didn't regret their deaths. Not truely. The thought settled uncomfortably in his stomach. Why wouldn’t he miss them? The UNSC needed every soldier they could get to stave the covenant onslaught. Aldridge’s thought was interrupted as the spartan yelled a warning, and a team of spec ops elites appeared in a nearby doorway.
Aldridge lept out from behind the pelican and ran to a nearby pillar, laying out a mag of 7.62 into the nearest alien. It turned and growled, only for a frag thrown by the spartan to tear through its weakened shields and disembowel it. Aldridge ducked back behind the pillar as plasma splashed across the space next to him. He reloaded his rifle, and peeking around the cover, searched for the next target as the spartan finished the elite that had charged him with a slurry of slugs to the chest. The body fell next to the other two the spartan had accounted for. The last elite growled and let off a burst from its plasma repeater towards the spartan, then shivered and disappeared from sight. Aldridge grabbed a frag off his belt, and looked towards the spartan. The armored figure nodded towards a control panel, seemingly lighting and shifting by itself. Carefully, Aldridge primed the grenade and lobbed it underhand towards the panel. Something unseen jumped backwards, visible only from the distorted lights of the panel. The grenade exploded, exposing a large and menacing alien elite, all four mandibles curled into a vicious sneer as its depleted energy shields crackled around it. A single 12.7x40mm slug from Aldridge’s handgun pierced through the mouth of the elite and sprayed green matter against the wall behind it. The nearly headless body crumpled to the ground and fell off the platform, landing with a meaty thump.
The spartan looked over to Aldridge.
“Nice work,” he said, nodding to the now still form of the elite. “See if they have any grenades; they might come in handy.”
Aldridge nodded once and, picking his way past the grunts, moved to one of the dead elites. As he nealt by the first body, he noticed the fist sized whole through its chest, put there by the spartans chain gun. He wondered how the spartan managed to carry that weighty piece of weaponry all day, let alone use it effectively in combat.
As Aldridge laid the last of the captured plasma devices next to the pelican within easy reach, a memory of himself on Reach surfaced. He had been defending the army airfield next to the ONI facility in Espoz. The covies had sent waves of light infantry, covered by their wraith tanks in the back. Aldridge had been on the west flank in the trenches surrounding a bunker, repelling wave after wave of aliens. Regrouping was impossible, mostly thanks to the banshee flyers constantly swooping and strafing the defenders lines. He had lost half his squad in one such strafing run. There had been a lull in the ground fighting for the past twenty minutes, and three of his squadmates got caught in a banshee’s fuel rod blast. They had been ducking in and out of cover, policing weapons dropped by the covenant troops. One moment they were there, then they were gone except for a scorch mark. A single mental image of them highlighted in an evil green light from the blast was left seared in his mind. He didn’t regret their deaths. He regretted the loss of their guns, of the bodies to man the turrets, of the ammo and grenades they had been carrying. It all was vital to the fight they were losing. He didn’t miss the people in the armor, carrying the rifles, however. He only missed their usefulness. He didn’t dislike them, they were on friendly terms. The person they were simply wasn’t important to him. He realized he had gone numb from the war.
Aldridge pondered this new realization as he sat against the pelican, watching the stars and planet go by outside. He looked over, searching for the spartan, and found him kneeling by a short wall, watching the doors. The spartan looked over at him.
“Four minutes until we hit that supercarrier.” The spartan's russian accent seemed more pronounced than before. 
Aldridge nodded to Reach, still visible out the hanger doors.
“You gonna miss this place?” he asked. The spartan gave him an interesting look.
“I’m going to wish I could’ve done more.”
Aldridge turned this idea over in his head. The spartan had surely already done a lot for the UNSC, even if you only took into account today's events.
“You’ve done a lot though, haven’t you? I mean, there’s no doubt you’ve done your share, right?”
The spartan looked away from the planet below, shaking his head.
“Spartans can never do enough. There’s always something more to be done,” he said.
Aldridge looked at him, not understanding.
“Spartans were supposed to be the solution. We were supposed to be the last thing humanity would have to make to win the war. To win every war.”
“Well, aren’t you? You guys are basically invincible, right?” Aldridge asked.
The spartan shook his head.
“No. No, we aren’t invincible, and nothing those bastards at ONI section 2 say about us should be taken seriously.” The spartan sighed.
“We, or at least the Spartan IIs, were originally supposed to suppress the insurrection, before we even knew about the covenant. We did a fairly good job, and it was looking great until Harvest. That's when we realized the best Humanity had to offer was barely on par with the average covenant elite. Only difference is, while we had around thirty spartans, they had millions of elites. We’re losing this war because of numbers. Numbers and technology.”
Aldridge shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t meant to go prodding.
“The spartans are probably the one thing standing between humanity and extinction. When you are one of thirty saviors responsible for the future of an entire race, for billions on billions of people, you can never do enough. The only way to come close is to win. If we win today, which we will, and the supercarrier goes down, which it will, we still lose, because the war isn't over. Everytime a spartan dies, it's a loss. It leaves a spot that will never be filled the way it used to be. That's why I wish I could’ve done more.”
The spartan stood up, and picking up his chain gun, moved to the pelican and disappeared inside. Aldridge heard the clinking of belted ammo and grenades. The spartan reappeared and sat on the pelicans bay ramp, looking out the hanger. 
“At first, fighting and winning over and over is exhilarating. You feel invincible. When you go for years without being injured, always completing your mission, you feel like a god. Hell, maybe you are. I don't know” said the spartan.
He looked to Aldridge. The marine could see his own face in the visor, emotionless and machine like as usual.
“After a couple years of fighting and winning over and over again, things start to fade. People, places, things, they all seem less important than they were. The only thing that sticks with you is your team. Your ever present team. They’re closer than family. And when you lose one, when you're fighting and you don’t have that link in your squad, you feel like you forgot your pants before the combat drop” continues the spartan.
“Replacing people is hard. You don’t want to lose them either. When Noble team’s number 6 died, we went a while without a replacement. Then the new guy came in. He worked pretty well with everyone else. I didn’t want to lose him either. That’s why I’m here and he’s not. I gave him another chance to win. I knew I wouldn’t have one.”
The spartan stood up and moved towards one of the side doors, settling behind cover.
“When life fades, when war makes you numb, find something and hold onto it, Corporal. Find something that keeps you human. Don’t let it go.”
Aldridge nodded, thinking.
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
Aldridge stood up and moved to another of the doors into the hanger. He checked the mission timer in his HUD. It read :58 seconds. He thought back to his life, his regretless life, the one where nothing remained that he cared about. He remembered the spartans advice: when life fades, hold onto something. He had nothing to hold onto now, of course. It was too late anyways. They’d be docking with the supercarrier in less than a minute, and then the spartan would detonate the bomb. He didn't have any time left to find something to hold onto in his life.
The timer ticked down. At :15 seconds, the spartan moved to the pelican and opened an access cover on the slipspace drive. The timer read :07 seconds. The spartan looked at Aldridge. He took off his helmet. Aldridge noticed for the first time on the spartan’s armor a faded and scorched S-052 on the chest piece. He realized it must be a callsign of sorts. 
As the timer clicked to :00, Aldridge realized he did have a regret in his life. As he realized it, it became more apparent how big of a regret it was. As he looked out the hanger door over Reach and the stars around it, he realized he hadn’t held onto anything in his life. He had not taken the time to value something or someone. 
The spartan’s gauntlet rose, then fell onto the button protruding from the slipspace drive. The void emerged and expanded, instantly swallowing the pelican, then the hanger, and within seconds, the fuselage of the super carrier was split into two, rent apart by the darkness that took Spartan-052 and Corporal Steven Aldridge to the beyond.
Category:Lore
Category:Halo: Reach
Category:Jorge-052