14So I just watched "The Return" on Halo Waypoint and I just loved the emotions of the repentant Shipmaster. Then I go and finish Halo 3's campaign again and before you know it, Bob's your uncle and this idea pops into my head. This is my first Halo fic so I hope I do justice to this truly epic game. Now, on with the story!
This world was dead, the whole world. Even from high obit, one could tell that this pitiful ball of ashes, glass and decaying human misery had held little to no life for a long time and it never would again.
This world had a name once. It had been named Kholo by the humans who had settled on its fertile soil in search of expanding the frontier for their race. Looking to the horizon, millions of people had called its prosperous cities and towns home. They tilled the fields, loved their land and paid tribute to the soil that all of humanity could call home, Earth. That was all in a happier time when people looked to the stars with hope, when extinction wasn't a very real prospect for the Human Race.
The Human-Covenant War which began in 2525 had quickly set much of the Outer Colonies ablaze. Within a few years, the UNSC had been forced to retreat to the Inner Colonies with the Covenant snapping at their heels, ever outnumbering and outgunning the beleaguered Human forces.
In 2539, the Covenant Fleet of Righteous Deliverance had intercepted a human freighter which had failed to initiate the Cole Protocol when its cargo manifest was retrieved and analysed by Covenant Engineers. It was sheer miraculous chance that the Covenant hadn't discovered the location of Earth there and then but the outcome still resulted in the discovery and subsequent loss of another Human World, namely Kholo.
When the Covenant Navy descended upon Kholo in 2539, it wouldn't have been inaccurate to say that hell had descended upon the planet. The few UNSC ships that were anchored in the Kholo system had been blasted out of space before a general alarm could even be sounded; such was the might of the Covenant.
The humans had fought valiantly for a while but it was all in vain. To the last man the UNSC Army had fallen in defence of the civilian population of Kholo who waited for salvation to arrive from the Navy ships stationed in the neighbouring Creed system. They never came.
When the human forces had been scattered and crushed enough, the Covenant troops had been ordered back to their ships in preparation for Kholo's ritual destruction. The Minor Prophet of Conviction who had been attached to the Fleet of Righteous Deliverance had ordered the Shipmaster of the flagship Assault Carrier to cleanse the planet with cascades of purifying Holy fire. Suffering was the true path of those who stood in the way of the Great Journey, the non-believer. Theirs was a path of misery and damnation as it was meant to be, dictated by the will of the Prophets and enforced by the might of the Sangheili Warrior Caste. Kholo was not the first to suffer this fate and she was far from the last as well.
Today Kholo is dead. It's only distinguishing mark is the massive Forerunner glyph carved into the crust of Kholo's surface by a rain of superheated plasma. Bisecting ruined cities and decaying fields, the glassy lines carved into Kholo form the word "faith" in the Covenant dialect. "Destroy them with Faith" the Prophet had ordered. So the Sangheili did with every bit of murderous zeal that they had applied to their martial ways until they had refined war into an art form as well as the cornerstone of the society of this driven, fierce species.
The last of the Human population of Kholo did not die well. The few hundred thousand civilians who had survived the initial assault had been herded into overcrowded underground bunkers by the few remaining soldiers of the UNSC Army who could still stand and fight. As people flooded underground in order to escape the fury and faith of the aliens, the surviving command structure of the UNSC Army forces on Kholo had been ordered to protect the civilians, dig in and begin a guerrilla campaign against the Covenant Forces. Stretched far too thin to perform their tasks effectively, the human soldiers did their duty admirably even to the end.
When the Fleet of Righteous Deliverance finally began to glass the planet, many tens of thousands of people were still exposed to the apocalyptic destruction. These were the lucky ones who were mostly vaporised in an instant, reduced to their singular atomic components in less than a few milliseconds; they would have felt little to no pain at all. The ones who had made it underground however had not been so fortunate.
Crowded underground like rats down a hole, these people had sat and waited for salvation to arrive from Creed. Instead as the plasma bombardment scorched the planet, the temperatures inside of these underground shelters had skyrocketed nearly three hundred degrees in an instant even with blast doors closed, the humans suffered horrific, ugly deaths. The heat was great but not quite great enough to cause human flesh to combust spontaneously. Exposed to such fearsome heat, the humans, civilian and soldier alike, men, women and children boiled from the inside out. Blood bubbling and bodily fluids converted to superheated steam, the brains of many simply exploded and evaporated. Now lifeless husks and skeletons sit where they died. Clinging to one another or simply in the position which it was in when it had stopped writhing in unimaginable agony.
Such horrific scenes like this are common across the devastated Colony Worlds of the UNSC and it is for this reason alone that many of the surviving members of Humanity refuse to visit their worlds glassed by the Covenant. Even roving Insurrectionists steer well clear of dead worlds such as this. The sheer numbers of so many slaughtered for nothing but a collection of lies in this interstellar holocaust is simply too much for many to bear.
Today the UNSC still had no idea just how many people died during the Human-Covenant War. Official estimates place the numbers of the dead at just over twenty three billion souls with many millions more declared missing. No single monument, no tribute or memorial could possibly commemorate or encompass the scale of such an epic and useless loss of life. No act of penance or atonement can possibly repay this massive debt of blood. Covenant Separatists who once fought Humanity now fight alongside their Human comrades against the fragmenting forces of the Covenant Loyalists but there is still an understandable amount of mistrust and animosity between the Separatists and the Human Race despite the recent detente between the two.
November 26th, 2559
Former UNSC Colony Planet Kholo
Status: Partially Glassed by the Covenant Navy in 2539
Six years after the end of the Human-Covenant Wareason alone that many of the surviving members of Humanity refuse to visit their worlds glassed by the
The lone Sangheili hoisted the injuredorydea pops into my head. This is my first Halo fic so I hope I do justice to this truly epic game. Human to his feet as the dull sky suddenly became much darker than usual. Not that this made much difference. Everything on this dead world was dull, grey and lifeless. Even the thin grasses that had managed to survive the mass extinctions looked half-alive. The white armoured Sangheili glanced skyward as the source of the shadow broke through the ashen clouds and parted the sky like a titanic metal Earth whale.
The massive superstructure and sweeping curvature of the hull was instantly recognised by the Sangheili as a massive Separatist Assault Carrier, his Assault Carrier which was now descending from low orbit. The very ship that had rained beams of cleansing Holy Fire upon this world and carved the Covenant glyph meaning "faith" into the surface of this now dead world not twenty years ago when the Covenant's war against Humanity was raging and setting the stars ablaze.
"You are going to live Human! Do you hear me?" cried the Sangheili Ultra over the thunderous noise of the great ship's engines and the raging dust storm that now swirled around them. The Human was too injured to reply and merely groaned in agony as he shielded his wound from the glassy dirt that threatened to infect the carbine wound to his abdomen. "The Human had been remarkably lucky" thought the Ultra. Had the carbine shot been off by a few millimetres then the miniature fuel rod projectile would have hit his vulnerable internal organs or worse his spinal cord. Instead the round had passed through his abdominal cavity, broken a rib on the way out and cauterized the exposed flesh which had helped keep his bleeding down. If it had been a human projectile, the man would have already bled out.
"Shipmaster what is your position down there? Respond so that we may pick you up" for the first time in many days, the Shipmaster's personal comm unit inside his helmet buzzed with radio chatter.
"I hear you Major. I need you to send for a dropship and some medical supplies. I'll be activating my beacon momentarily"
"Are you wounded Shipmaster?"
"Nay brother, I found a Human encampment in the ruins of their city being raided by Jackal Pirate scum. I have one survivor with me and he is badly wounded."
"Humans! Here? They never return to their Lost Worlds! What in the Forerunners names are-"
"There is little time to be lost Major! Send that dropship immediately!"
"Yes noble Shipmaster, it shall be done. Out"
As the comm unit fell silent again the white armoured Shipmaster had time to ponder the nature of what these humans had discovered. Minutes earlier he had searched the temporary dwellings they had been using as a base of operations and had found images of structures and markings which were obviously Forerunner in origin as well as some samples of smooth unblemished Forerunner metal. There had even been an image of a sacred Oracle. What the humans had dubbed a "Monitor". This had raised the Shipmaster's interest significantly.
The very reason the Shipmaster had imposed this brief exile in isolation upon himself for a short while was to help his people find a new purpose for themselves. Vengeance in the face of betrayal could fuel a people only for so long a time, even a race as martially minded and motivated by honour as the Sangheili. Without the Prophets to commune with the Gods, the Sangheili risked extinction through the lack of a purpose. They didn't know what their Gods wanted of them at all. The Shipmaster had returned to this, the place of his greatest victory and travesty in order to search for something that he had last felt on that day twenty years ago. The Shipmaster had felt the touch of the Gods more than he had ever done in his entire life when the Prophet of Conviction had congratulated him on the destruction he had caused in the name of their self serving lies. It had to be more than mere coincidence that these Humans here had found Forerunner artefacts in Kholo's dead soil not only that but an Oracle of the Forerunners themselves. If they could find this Oracle then perhaps he could find a purpose not only for his clan but for his people once again. With the Human Reclaimer's help, the Oracle would be found and for once his people would be able to commune with the Gods directly for a change rather than from the lying tongues of the Prophets.
"When that day comes" thought the Shipmaster "we shall have a reason to be, a purpose once more".
As the swirling dust storm began to die down, the white armoured Shipmaster could hear the sound of the engines of a Phantom dropship approaching the square in which the Human expedition had set up camp. The dropship was decked in the lively colours of the Separatists, green and silver unlike the stern purple and magenta tones of the Loyalists. The side hatches were opened and two blue armoured Sangheili minors manned the turret positions scanning the dead streets for signs of any more Jackal Raiders whilst a Sangheili Major clad in red descended down the gravity lift accompanied by a lance of Separatist Unngoy followed by a pair of Lekgolo clad in resplendent golden armour signifying their allegiance to the Separatist cause.
"Honoured Shipmaster we cannot tarry any longer" said the Major as he helped support the injured Human.
"Agreed Major although I must ask you the cause of your delay"
"Forgive me for my hindrance Shipmaster but we had to alter our course to avoid the falling wreckage of a Human vessel"
This was understandable. Many thousands of fragments of the battle above Kholo still floated up in orbit. On occasion pieces both large and small fell down to the surface like meteors. He had seen many fragments light the darkened sky when the ashen clouds parted enough to allow a glimpse of the stars above. Some fragments disintegrated in spectacular fiery trails similar to shooting stars whilst larger pieces occasionally survived re-entry and slammed into the desolate wasteland below.
When the Separatists and the injured Human were safely aboard the Phantom, the Shipmaster took one last trip back to the primitive temporary dwellings in order to bring the items that the Humans had found here. Documents, photographs and the fragments of Forerunner metal as well as the schematics of the Oracle. As the Shipmaster was walking back to the Phantom, stuffing the last of the documents into his kit bag an urgent voice crackled over the comms in his helmet.
"Shipmaster hurry back to the Phantom! We're seeing movement in the ruined building thirty paces to the rear of your position!" it was one of the door gunners on the Phantom and from the sound of it, whatever it was that had moved had set the nervous warrior on edge.
"What is it? What do you see warrior?"
"By the Rings!" whispered the warrior with equal amounts of awe and fear "that can't possibly be-"
"What in the name of Sanghelios is it?" barked the Shipmaster as he turned to face whatever was to his rear, Curveblade in one hand and Plasma Pistol in the other.
"...d-d-Demon?"
"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" called out a new deeper voice from the ruins, a Human voice "Friendly coming out!"
For a moment the Shipmaster's mandibles fluttered uselessly and his voice failed him as he saw what, no who was approaching him.
Standing in front of him was something which had killed entire legions of Covenant soldiers by itself. A creature that had sterilised entire Flood hives without breaking a sweat. Clad in green painted powered armour with a Human assault rifle slung across its back it held its hands up in a symbol of submission. Even in this state, the giant was still an awesome sight. His faceplate was a visor of mirrored gold that reflected the light of the sun and masked his features. Who could say just how many had fallen to the fearsome glare of that expressionless window into oblivion?
His green armour was bulky but had definitely seen better days. It was battered and the paint had chipped in many places. The chest plate look like it had sustained a direct hit from the shield of a charging Lekgolo or perhaps a heavy blow from a Flood Tank Form. On the upper chest plate could still be visible the human number "117" painted in white. The man within that armour had transcended beyond mere mortality into a legendary figure even amongst the Sangheili.
A hero quite unlike any other to the Humans and a Demon from the pits of Hell to the Covenant Loyalists and even some Sangheili,he Ark as well as best the dreaded Parasite and its Gravemind time and time againman had f this man had fought the Arch Liar Truth on Earth and on the Ark as well as bested the dreaded Parasite and the abominable Gravemind time and time again alongside the valiant Arbiter of the Sangheili. If ever there was such a thing as a living legend then it was this man standing before the awestruck Shipmaster.
Standing before him was Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, better known as the Master Chief.
November 26th, 2559
Rear end of the UNSC Frigate Forward Unto Dawn, Cryo Bay
Entering space around Former UNSC Colony Kholo
Two-hundred-and-eighteen minutes before...
Floating through space in the rear end of the Forward Unto Dawn, the hulking form of the Master Chief was resting in one the cryo tubes, slumbering in a deep sleep on the edge between death and a coma. A thin film of frost covered the inside glass of the tube making it impossible to see inside or outside of the tube. The freezing effects of the cryo tube essentially halted the need for life support systems but sensors monitoring the vital signs of the single inhabitant of the cryo bay still beeped incessantly with a long flat tone that indicated that the slumbering giant's heartbeat had stopped entirely as it had done for nearly seven years now.
You don't dream in cryo at all, the monitors regarding brain activity clearly to attested this. All bodily functions including the electrical activity in the brain essentially cease for as long as the pod is told to keep the inhabitant in a state of living death. What a change it was then when medical scanners that had been assigned to monitor the SPARTAN-II's vital signs began to indicate faint electrical activity in his brain. The signals were erratic and barely registered on the machinery. He wasn't anywhere near consciousness or even light sleep but the change was still there. Safe inside his tube, the Master Chief began to dream for the first time in years as the temperature inside the tube slowly but surely began to climb from the minus two-hundreds up towards zero.
Cold blue light was the first thing the Master Chief saw as his frost filmed eyes snapped open. He then snapped them shut and wished he hadn't as the faint light hurt his retinas which had gone unused for so long. Even SPARTAN-II supersoldiers were not immune to the abject effects of spending long amounts of time in the freezer. He felt strangely disembodied and unattached to the rest of his body as he lay there for a few moments coming back to full consciousness.
When at last he felt he could open his eyes again he saw that his helmets visor had been covered in a sheet of frost that prevented him from seeing much else apart from the faint blue light shining somewhere outside of his cryo tube. Wiping away the thin ice away from his visor and the inside of the tube the Master Chief waited for a moment before the cryo tubes seal automatically broke as the inhabitant regained full consciousness. Cryogenic gases and other supercooled chemicals used to induce cryonic sleep spilled out into the cryo bay of the Forward Unto Dawn.
Everything had been left the way John had remembered it when he had climbed out of the chilly embrace of the freezing tube including the blue light. The ethereal blue glow which was the last thing he could remember seeing before everything went black was now casting a faint glow on everything from its pedestal. "Wait, the holotank!" he thought as he remembered the other castaway who had been stuck on this unfortunate Frigate with him.
Cortana
The AI's avatar was surprisingly standing and greeting his awakening with a warm smile. Her holographic avatar was what was casting the blue light all over the Cryo Bay. Lines of code were scrolling up and down her foot tall hologram too fast for even John's genetically enhanced eyesight to decipher and the air around her seemed to shimmer blue and purple.
Perhaps they had managed to be rescued before her seven year lifespan ran out he thought and John's heart lifted with joy at the notion. Already he could imagine returning to civilization and saving her from the curse that all Smart AI's had to carry. The burden of a seven year lifespan and then an unavoidable descent into Rampancy affected the outlook of many AI's including Cortana and this was something she bitterly resented. She was practically human by the time John had rescued her from the clutches of the Flood Gravemind in the bowels of his lair in High Charity.
"Welcome back Chief" she said, her lilting voice sounded small and slightly forced, no doubt the result of not speaking for a long time.
"Good to see you t-"
"The first thing you need to know is that you are listening to a message encoded in a subroutine programmed to wake you up upon our arrival."
"Oh" though John, his morale dropping considerably.
"In my awakened state I estimate that I would last no more than a month before I become irreparably Rampant. To that end I have deactivated my higher functions until such a time as you are able to get us back to civilization and hopefully to a UNSC AI technician."
Thank goodness for small mercies then. John didn't know that Smart AI's could pull off such a feat. Perhaps her resistance to the Gravemind had pushed her further than any Smart AI had gone before forcing her to shut herself off from the Gravemind's advances. She was certainly traumatised to say the least by the time he pulled her out of that alien hellhole.
"By my calculations the date should be November 26th, 2559 and we, that is to say the ass end of the Dawn should be about thirty two minutes dirtside from a former UNSC Colony planet called Kholo. Its only 19.4 light years from Earth give or take a few hundred thousand kilometres."
The name struck a chord in John's memory. Former Inner Colony partially glassed by the Covenant at the loss of a few million civilians and UNSC Military Personnel in 2539 and deserted by both sides as the war continued to rage. Kholo had been one of the first of the Inner Colonies to fall to the relentless march of the Covenant war machine.
"It was only partially glassed by the Covenant so there should still be enough in the ruins to get a message back to Earth or even get off the planet plus the beacon I've dropped from the Dawn should still be pinging once we hit planetside."
As the message continued to play, John began to busy himself by looking for his weapons and ammunition. His rugged MA5C Assault Rifle was still slotted in the rack next to his cryo tube where he had left it and he pulled it out with a sharp tug. Despite being somewhat battered it was still serviceable and the ammo counter still read 32 rounds in the magazine. Along with the other nine magazines stored in his MJOLNIR Mk VI Armour's ammo compartments this left him with 320 7.62mm FMJ rounds for his MA5C. Satisfactory for both Brute and Grunt work should the worst come to the worst.
Next to Cortana's holotank floated the familiar form of an M6G pistol. Once this had been securely fastened to the SPARTAN's magnetized thigh plate, he scavenged six extra magazines for the pistol. It would be a suitable back up weapon but he wouldn't choose it to tackle a Brute with, for that kind of work he'd have to rely on his MA5C.
"My analysis of the Dawn's hanger bays inventory indicates that a single Pelican remains docked in Hangar 2. You'll need to get there before the heat from re-entry makes extraction impossible so you might want to pick things up a bit"
"Oh yeah? You obviously never saw me jump out of Truth's Dreadnought" thought John remembering the dizzying height of the two kilometre freefall into the Kenyan jungles with nothing but a hunk of the Forerunner ship to stop himself from disintegrating in the intense heat. Cortana would have slapped him if she saw him pull off a stunt like that if she even had real arms to slap him with.
Jumping out of a MAC station with a live time-bomb was one thing but jumping out of an enemy ship in the midst of an orbital battle during re-entry onto the surface without HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) gear took an entirely different type of crazy to pull off. Or luck, perhaps a bit of both. Certainly no other SPARTAN would be brave or downright foolhardy enough to be caught doing that over their dead augmented bodies, except Jorge perhaps. The Big Man was always willing to take the fall, sometimes literally if it meant his team would all survive but the last time that John had heard of Jorge-052 was that he had been reassigned to a team of SPARTAN-III's attached to Army Special Forces on Reach along with Kurt-051 a lifetime ago when he still had Brothers and Sisters, when he wasn't left with the burden of remembering them all as the Last Spartan of the II generation.
"Oh and one more thing Chief" said Cortana, pulling John out of his reverie as her subroutine prepared her data chips transfer from the holotank to his helmet "I may be essentially asleep but once you get to the surface of Kholo please just remember to keep your head down! There's still gonna be two of us inside that thick SPARTAN skull of yours"
"Duly noted" though John with a wry smile. At least her dry sense of humour had survived her long isolation in space and abuse at the tentacles of the Flood. Reaching out, he gently removed Cortana's data chip from the holotank and slotted it into the back of his helmet. For a moment it felt as if somebody was pouring icy cold water down his spine as the dormant AI flooded into his neural pathways and nervous system via his neural lace. He shivered for a moment as he let her get back into his system before he set off from the cryo bay towards Hangar transfer from the holotank to his htra magazines for the pistol. It would be a suitable back up weapon but he wouldn'
Without Cortana's blue hologram to illuminate the darkness, the SPARTAN-II switched on his helmets flashlight and began to float weightlessly through the hallways of the shattered Frigate. It took him a few moments to orient himself in the unfamiliar layout of the ship in zero-g. The gravity plating in the deck must have failed along with most of the other primary systems when the rear end of the ship lost power.
After several minutes of uncertainly floating through the winding corridors of the empty ship, John arrived at Hangar 2 and found a single Pelican still resting in its clamp just as Cortana had said. Two of the other docking clamps were empty whilst a third held the trashed remains of another Pelican. It appeared that this one had suffered severe damage when the Dawn had been traumatically sheared in half by the slipspace portal.
John could barely squeeze his seven foot, heavily armoured frame into the cockpit of the Pelican but once he settled into the pilot's seat which had been designed with smaller Marine Corps pilots in mind the first thing he did was open the hull door beneath the Pelican and expose the hangar bay to the vacuum of space. More time had elapsed than he thought during his awakening and orientation. The ship hadn't entered the atmosphere quite yet but it was still buffeting dangerously on the upper edges of the planet's stratosphere. Small tongues of fire were licking the exterior of the Forward Unto Dawn and some of the Titanium-A armour plating was already peeling off or rapidly heating under the friction.
"Now would definitely be a very good time to go" decided John as he flicked the ignition switch of the Pelican's front and rear thrusters and took hold of the joystick. Like the rest of his SPARTAN brothers and sisters, John had been given extensive training in the piloting of both UNSC and Covenant aircraft so piloting the Pelican down to the surface would be a very easy task providing he steered clear of the wreckage that was now freely peeling off the much abused aft of the ship.
With one last flight check completed, John initiated the release of the docking clamp and felt his stomach lurch and his adrenaline spike as the dropship violently released itself from the Forward Unto Dawn and plummeted in freefall towards the planet below. With the sudden increase in the g-forces acting on his body, he was straining every muscle in his body to withstand the pressure of the dropping Pelican. Moments later the Pelican's thrusters kicked in and the amount of Gs acting on the SPARTAN's body dropped back to an acceptable level as he guided the Pelican into a leisurely cruising speed behind the falling half-frigate which was now glowing red hot in the heat.
Once he was satisfied that the distance between his Pelican and the Dawn was safe enough to avoid the debris, John took an opportunity to examine the planet below him. Like most other glassed worlds that he had seen throughout his career, Kholo looked like most of the others. Barren and lifeless but not shiny and black like a fully glassed planet such as Reach for instance. Kholo's fortunes suddenly seemed much better than most of the other Inner Colonies which had felt the full force of the Covenant's wrath.
What surprised John about this world was the presence of the huge Covenant glyph that had seemingly been cut into Kholo's surface by the plasma bombardment. It meant little to him right now as he couldn't read the Covenant language as fluently as Cortana or a linguistic expert could, his limited vocabulary extended to spoken commands intended to be used on Covenant POW's. To him it just looked like some of the Covenant had major graffiti issues during the War. No doubt Cortana would be all over translating the massive continental cut if she was in her awakened state and once upon a time it may have given ONI significant cause for deciphering it back when it looked like Humanity still had a slim chance of winning the war.
The Dawn was now glowing red hot and flames licked her flanks as she tumbled and screamed through the atmosphere. Larger and larger pieces of the superstructure were peeling off revealing the skeletal structure beneath. More than once, John had to rapidly swerve to avoid chunks of molten slag and Titanium-A plating. For a few more torturous seconds, the Dawn shook violently as she fell closer and closer to Kholo's ravaged surface before she finally entered the atmosphere properly. By now the battered half-ship had lost more than a third of her bulk and the rest was still dangerously close to disintegrating. Without anything or anyone onboard to help steer the ship or alter the rate of descent, the Dawn was put utterly at the mercy of the forces of friction, gravity and forward momentum who did little to ease the passing of the once proud Frigate which was now little more than a chunk of red hot scrap metal by the time she finally crashed into the surface stern-first at close to the speed of four hundred metres per second.
The shockwave from the massive impact pulverised most of the surviving or half-wrecked buildings within almost half a kilometre of the Dawn's crash site. She carried on sliding across entire city blocks for another few hundred metres before finally coming to a rest on her port side. Safe in his Pelican, John could clearly see the long gouge that had been cut into the ruins by the fallen Frigate.
The Forward Unto Dawn was now utterly unrecognizable as a Navy ship or even anything that looked remotely capable of space travel. It was sobering to say the least to see such a distinguished vessel reduced to this pitiful wreck of fire and red hot metal. A quick scan of the wreck by John's Pelican indicated that somehow, despite all of the impossible odds, the Dawn was still plaintively broadcasting the rescue beacon on all UNSC superluminal frequencies as Cortana had predicted. Despite their flimsy appearance, small size and lack of shielding or ablative plating, the UNSC built its frigates to last, even beyond their use-by date.
Glancing over the control panels of the Pelican's cockpit once again, John found himself faced with yet another problem in his growing list of troubles. The Pelican's fuel reserves were running uncomfortably low; the metaphorical needle was hovering just above the red. By his estimates he had less than eight minutes left in the reserve tanks before his Pelican would be sucking fumes and dropping out of the sky like a rock and, whilst fast and reliable as the workhorse of the UNSC, Pelicans had very stubby vestigial wings which the dorsal jets protruded from, not exactly the most aerodynamic thing to glide to a controlled crash in.
Suddenly to his great surprise a red NAV point indicator suddenly appeared on his helmets HUD (Heads Up Display) and seemed to be indicating an old ONI Building approximately twenty three kilometres to the local North West. Cortana's subroutine was still working to help him even now. The resourceful AI had no doubt done her homework on Kholo in preparation for their arrival. Out of all the buildings in this ruined city, an ONI building had the highest probability of preserving much equipment and supplies due to ONI's penchant for subterranean fortresses beneath their building complexes in order to house Dumb Superintendant Class AI's for administrative work across the city so going there first seemed to be a good choice for finding shelter and equipment.
John swung the Pelican around and began to head towards the ONI building painted out for him by his HUD. As the fuel reserves got lower and lower, John had to choose between maintaining fuel efficiency and covering as much distance at speed as possible. Ultimately he chose the latter of the two options and pushed the Pelican as fast as its thrusters would push it whilst skimming a handful of metres above the streets in order to minimize the damage that would be caused by the inevitable crash which was now only seconds away.
Alarms were now buzzing across the controls of the Pelican. Red warning lights did nothing to improve John's mood as a computerized voiced warned "FUEL LEVELS LOW, FUEL LEVELS LOW. ABORT, ABORT, ABORT".
"COME ON!" roared John in frustration as he urged the Pelican onward but he knew that it had finally had it. The engines spluttered for a few moments before dying altogether and then the Pelican dropped into the ruins like a stone. Thankfully the Pelican and his MJOLNIR armour absorbed most of the impact so he simply tore his way out of the Pelican's rear hatch with his bare hands and turned away from the crashed dropship to find the NAV point again. There it was, to the North this time and now only 9.7 kilometres away, resting on a thin wispy column of smoke on the horizon that stretched up into the dead brown sky before fading into nothingness. In a world of death and decay however, that smoke now seemed like a beacon of life calling to the lone SPARTAN-II from across the decaying ruins of the city.
Whatever had caused the smoke to be there had happened recently, within the past few days by his estimate. Perhaps it was just a wildfire or a destroyed structure but then again, there was a chance that not everything on Kholo had died twenty years previously during the End. People could survive on partially glassed planets for months provided they had the shelter and supplies, Doctor Halsey and the others had proven that on post-invasion Reach during Operation: FIRST STRIKE, it all seemed so long ago to John now.
Onwards he trekked for who knew how long. It may have been a few minutes or an hour or so but for all John cared it could have been any length of time. Time seemed irrelevant now. His MJOLNIR armour's mission clock was still in perfect working order but he saw no point in checking it. All around him it was hard to tell where the ashen grey soil ended and the weather beaten, decaying human ruins began. His green boots were beginning to turn to a lifeless grey as the glassy dust clung to the advanced alloys and paint. His helmet's visor was working doubly hard to constantly scrub the golden glass clean of the fine particles. No doubt also his MA5C and M6G would be rendered practically unusable as the abrasive dirt would find its way into the working parts which would subsequently cause constant jamming in the weapons. Despite the best engineering efforts of Misriah Armouries, weapons which fired solid slug ammunition were always at risk from foreign contaminants in the working parts of the weapon system and so they required constant cleaning in dusty environments despite the advances made in the technology over the past millennium.
As he trudged on alone through the decaying wilderness, John found himself becoming more and more lost in the monotony of the dead, drab colours that surrounded him. The ruined city seemed to be composed of a washed out mixture of dull greys and browns; the ground, the crumbling ruins, the thin grasses that occasionally poked up through the barren soil even the lifeless sky seemed take on the dull ashen tones of the dead world. Everything on this world was either already dead or dying off due to the mass extinctions caused by the glassing and nuclear winter. Surviving here for potentially months by himself suddenly seemed like a very uninviting prospect to the Master Chief. The promise of the salvation of the NAV beacon and the ever closer smoke column pushed John resolutely and brownse and more lost in the monotony of the dr
The soft squishing noises of the SPARTAN-II's heavy footfalls in the dusty soil were interrupted all of as sudden by a series of loud crunching sounds. Looking down, John, despite his lifetime spent baptised in the fires of war and still couldn't help but instinctively recoil in horror and disgust at the source of the sound.
Human bones surrounded the lone living SPARTAN in some grotesque, horrific imitation of living plants sprouting out of the blackened ground. Half-buried ribcages, thigh bones, small bones and everything in between could be seen in a haphazard carpet of death. Like everything else on this world, the bones had either been scorched black by the heat of the glassing or bleached into the local palette of dull colours by the unforgiving conditions. Pulling his foot back gently, John felt his heart break as he saw what had caused the dreadful crunching noise underneath his mighty boot.
A small, weather beaten skull belonging to a child, no older than twelve years now lay cracked open and half crushed at the feet of the SPARTAN-II, gazing up at him with accusing, lifeless sockets. Over all the long years of repeating combat and the loss of comrades and dear friends, John felt as though nothing could break him but this was the metaphorical straw that broke the camel's back. "We have been pushed so close to extinction" he thought. "Nobody deserves to be reduced to this. They'll pay for this atrocity" he swore to himself. No matter how many ugly Covenant sons-of-bitches he had to kill to level things out, he'll make them pay for what they had done to Humanity.
Thinking of Humanity gave John fresh resolve. Somewhere up there in that Galaxy of misery and death hung Earth and what precious few Inner Colonies that remained and so long as there was still a stinking Brute, zealous Prophet or gas sucking Grunt up there who still sought to exterminate his species then John would give every last drop of his blood in their defence. "Humanity still needs me. For all their sakes I have to survive this, get back to them." Yes, as long as the splinters of the Covenant Hegemony still existed then John still had a purpose, a duty to prevent atrocities like this from happening ever again. Quickly yet cautiously as not to offend the sanctity of the remains, the Master Chief set off again with a newfound sense of purpose coursing through his veins with every beat of his augmented heart.
A deafening crack a hundred times louder than any man-made sonic boom broke the disturbing silence and reverberated around the remains of the city. As the dismal twilight grew even darker, John looked up at the sky and saw the distinctive bulbous profile of a Covenant Assault Carrier, thousands of metres long descending from orbit to a stable position over the city. Things had got a whole lot more interesting for John now. Had the Covenant Loyalists intercepted the Dawn's signal and tracked him down to this dead backwater planet or was this the work of the Separatists? Text began to scroll across his visors HUD as Cortana's subroutine began to identify the massive ship that now hung above him.
NEW CONTACT . . . HIGH TONNAGE . . . STANDBY . . . ATTEMPTING TO ACESS LOCAL TAP . . .
ORIGIN . . . COVENANT . . . 98.7% CERTAINTY . . .
HULL CLASSIFICTION . . . ASSAULT CARRIER . . . POSSIBLE FLAGSHIP . . .
COVENANT DESIGNATION . . . (N/A) STANDBY . . . UNSC DESIGNATION: FHKA-52775 . . .
LAST SIGHTED . . . ANALYSING (cross-ref ONI records: access granted CTN042-9/SUBR-01) . . . KHOLO HIGH ORBIT, 2539 . . .
SIERRA-117 . . . ADVISE . . . EVADE . . .
"That" thought John to himself "is capital thinking but first I've got to find out if it's Bravo-Kilos or Split-Lips I'm dealing with here." Thinking of potentially being forced to dig in and evade or engage legions of Covenant Loyalists by himself pushed him harder towards the ever nearing ONI building and its plentiful supply of weapons, supplies and munitions not to mention automated defence systems and if he was lucky, a superluminal communications array that was still intact if his reputed "luck" that Cortana and Dr Halsey constantly cited still hadn't run out.
"One thing at a time John" said Chief Petty Officer Mendez to a nine year old John from the recesses of his memory. First came consolidating his position then came taking a look at these new arrivals. Hopefully the third step of holding off an entire Covenant Army would stay in the hypothetical part of his brain that always came up with the worst possible outcome in a given situation. By no means was John a pessimist but he thought it healthy to constantly remind himself of the possible consequences of everything he did or found himself in and subsequently do his best to avert it. Such thinking had helped him through tough choices through his career and saved not only his life but many others countless times especially over the last years of the War.
Finally, there it was, a hundred or so metres down the decaying street was a weather-beaten five-storey building with a fading Office of Naval Intelligence logo adorning the side panel facing the remains of a city square. The building had definitely seen better days, two of the upper floors on a the side of the building facing John were exposed to the elements either by decay or damage from the battle and as he drew nearer he could hear the wind whistling through the pieces of exposed rebar jutting out of the concrete at odd angles. Nonetheless, it looked like it would suffice to shelter and provide for him if this outward sign of survival was anything to go by.
Closer and closer he crept towards the building, MA5C at the ready for the slightest movement. The source of the smoke he had seen earlier was now within forty metres of his position in the midst of a cluster of very recent, very human looking tents. "Strange" thought John, the campsite looked like it could have housed up to twelve humans yet it was deserted. Shifting his movement to the balcony on his right overlooking the settlement he saw a shape that caused him to freeze up. A dead Jackal sniper lay slumped over the ledge, its long spindly fingers still clutching a Beam Rifle in its death grip.
The birdlike alien's indigo blood was splattered across the wall behind it in a spray of arterial blood from a neck shot. Instantly his experienced mind went to work as he deduced what had happened to the deceased alien. Judging by the shape and length of the splatter not to mention the unnatural angle of the Jackal's neck, a single well placed 7.62mm round had done this damage. Possibly an Assault Rifle round but most likely from an M329 Designated Marksman Rifle, whoever had shot this Jackal had been a trained professional possibly a soldier in the UNSC unlike the under-trained Militias and Insurrectionists he had encountered in previous engagements. It seemed as if the UNSC had, for some reason come back to Kholo, most likely for the data housed in the ONI building and if his hunch was right, the possible Covenant Loyalists had also come for the same thing.
Keeping constant tabs on his motion tracker, John thumbed the safety catch off his MA5C and stealthily moved through the ruins towards the deserted encampment on the lookout for any more Jackals or worse. There, a single yellow dot on his motion tracker indicated a stationary friendly contact 25 metres to his front accompanied by a red unidentified alien contact. Shifting slightly to get a better view, John saw a single white armoured Elite Ultra tending to a wounded human. Zooming in on the scene with his MJOLNIR armour's advanced visor integrated visual systems, John took in everything about the two. The discarded M6G, the scorched exit wound in the man's back from a Covenant Carbine, the exotic looking metal blade in the hand of the Sangheili Ultra, the benevolent way in which the Elite tended the man's wounds. Using his augmented hearing combined with his armour's sensitive auditory systems, the prone SPARTAN could hear the man's agonised groans from this distance and the Elite's heavy breathing.
Things had suddenly gone from bad to surprisingly much better. The Elites it seemed had taken it upon themselves to honour their alliance to their newfound Human comrades and that meant he could get off this dead rock and back to UNSC space. A larger red contact appeared on his motion tracker and a Separatist Phantom coloured green and silver descended to within a few metres of the Elite and the wounded man.
Slinging the MA5C and putting his hands above his head in a universally recognisable submissive position, the SPARTAN-II stood up and started walking towards the Phantom. Understandably the sudden unexpected appearance of a fully armoured SPARTAN-II gave the door gunner good reason to train his plasma cannon on him. The Ultra turned and faced John with a plasma pistol in one hand and the exotic metal blade in the other. Confidently, John continued striding forwards unafraid of the possibility of taking a face full of plasma.
"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" John shouted in a loud, firm voice that carried clearly around the desolate streets. "Friendly coming out!"
A moment later, the battle readiness of the Ultra was replaced by a look of flabbergasted wonder or at least what John thought it looked like on the face of an Elite. The only other Elites he had known who had displayed emotions other than those he had seen on countless battlefields were Rtas' Vadum, the Shipmaster of the Shadow of Intent and his unexpected brother-in-arms the Arbiter.
Smiling underneath his helmet secretly at the fact that he was instantly recognisable to the millions of aliens, friendly and unfriendly even after all these years, John couldn't resist asking the assembled Separatists "did you miss me?" Cortana might have told him off for saying something so . . . cliché but John was feeling more optimistic than he had felt in a long time, possibly since he had returned to Earth from Alpha Halo.
"This . . . cannot be so, this is impossible!" exclaimed the Elite in heavily accented English as John walked past him towards the Phantom's gravity lift. A red armoured Elite Major backed away from him and made a protective ward on himself with his free hand. "Still a superstitious lot I take it then" some things never changed. A squad of Separatist grunts cowered in terror behind the major averting their eyes and shaking with fear. Two golden armoured Hunters bristled dangerously as if sensing a challenge but even they backed down when the alleged Demon approached.
"But you died at the Ark to save us all, Humans and Covenant alike!" stuttered the Ultra still in denial "The Arbiter himself said that you couldn't have possibly lived after the Ark Portal collapsed!"
John stopped and turned and addressed the Ultra. "There is a saying among my people, Elite. Words of such great wisdom and comfort that have given many the strength to fight on when all seemed lost and they are: "Spartans never die, they're just Missing in Action" and with that, the Last Spartan turned and ascended up the gravity lift into the Phantom.
Once again, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 simply refused to go quietly. Soon the Human Race and the peoples of the Separatists were going to receive the best news they had heard for over 6 years since the end of the War: the Master Chief was coming home.
Aaaand that folks is the end of the first chapter which is basically giving the lowdown on the state of the Chief and some of the Galaxy at large six years on from Halo 3 (not to mention the biggest chapter I have ever done so far, srsly how do you guys keep it up?). So don't you worry, sooner or later you'll know what the human's found on Kholo and how the final vengeance of Humanity upon the Brutes shall play out but more of that later!
However don't expect anything new too soon as I'm up to my neck with UCAS and university shite not to mention coursework aplenty AND the works of Emile Durkheim. Stop me if my workload seems pathetic to any of you :D
Please remember to drop a review on the way out and tell me what you think! Lack of reviews makes me very sadface :( as a certain "Mastur Ch33f" would say.ons and ammunitionmessage to Earth or even get
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