July 24, 2552, En Route to Castle Base, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System
Lt. [Redacted] B-312 POV
The twin rotors of the UH-144 Falcon hummed a mechanical dirge overhead, their vibration threading through my Mjolnir like the pulse of a buried beast. Outside the open side hatch, Reach sprawled beneath us—its mountains clawing at low-hanging clouds, Highland peaks shrouded in steam like war ghosts. Ahead, nestled against a granite ridgeline, Castle Base emerged from the rock like a secret grown into place. Camouflage netting and hardened alloy blended it into the cliffside. It looked like it belonged there. It also looked like it didn't want to be found.
Noble Team. Every Spartan knew the name. A tight-knit Spartan-III unit running Mk. V armor. High-speed, high-risk, high-casualty ops. Thom-A293 had been one of theirs—his death bought time, saved lives, and left a vacancy. Now command wanted me to fill it.
I flexed my shoulders under the weight of my armor. Custom-coded to me like any Mjolnir set, but stripped of vanity—gunmetal grey with matte blue accents. The kind of colors that didn't catch light. My helmet wasn't standard issue either. I'd kept my ODST variant—a relic from my last deployment. High Command hadn't argued. Maybe they respected the service record. Maybe they just didn't care. Either way, I got to keep it. Tighter visual field, better reflex sync. More importantly, it felt like mine. Familiar. That mattered more than I liked to admit.
The Falcon's copilot twisted around in his seat and gave me a quick thumbs-up.
"Castle's waiting. You ready, Lieutenant?"
I gave a short nod. "Always."
Below, Castle Base loomed larger—Warthogs clustered on the concrete pad like beetles under a lamp, and a row of Pelicans were being prepped in the upper hangars, outlines half-obscured by shadow and industrial haze. The war effort was shifting. Reach could feel it. The fortress world—long untouchable—was bracing. And something about that stirred a warning in my chest.
The Falcon banked, engines adjusting pitch, and began its descent. My gauntlet curled instinctively around the side rail, grip firm. My vitals were steady. No cortisol spike. No flutter in the gut. Just trained readiness. Muscle memory and raw instinct.
I was a Spartan. Trained from childhood. Rebuilt cell by cell to be war incarnate. But even blades feel pressure at the whetstone.
This was a reassignment. A redeployment. A rebirth.
Designation: Noble Six.
The landing was smoother than expected. The Falcon's rotors whipped up a low halo of dust and gravel, scattering grit across the landing pad. I stepped down into it, boots grinding against the tarmac, helmet HUD adjusting for particulate.
Waiting at the edge of the pad was Colonel Urban Holland. Two ONI spooks flanked him—silent, unreadable—and behind them stood a pair of techs in ground crew garb, hands behind their backs, watching.
"Lieutenant," Holland greeted, tone clipped, arms folded behind him. "Welcome to Reach. We're on the clock."
No handshakes. No ceremony. Just orders.
I fell in step behind him, boots thudding on duracrete as we passed through Castle's outer hangar. The interior was all steel and efficiency—spartan, in more ways than one. We reached a personnel lift, and the moment the doors sealed, it dropped fast. Blue strip lighting lit the walls. No music. No noise but the hum of machinery and Holland's voice.
"Noble Team's been on Reach nearly two years. Recon, insurgent cleanups, blackout zones. The Visegrad Relay just went dark. No uplinks, no SOS, just silence."
He didn't mention Thom. Neither did I.
"Your file's been reviewed. They'll size you up in the field." A pause. "Trust is earned. Or it isn't."
The lift halted with a low hiss. We stepped into a corridor lined with reinforced blast doors and security checkpoints. Holland led the way. Eventually, he stopped at a sealed room. The door hissed open.
And there they were.
Carter-A259 stood first. Command posture without effort. Mark V armor painted in the unmistakable blue-white of leadership, burn-scarred and hardened by campaign after campaign. His gaze locked onto mine—sharp, direct, evaluating.
Kat-B320 was next. Her cybernetic arm glinted as she folded it across her chest. No expression. Just scrutiny. The kind that found weakness and didn't blink.
Jun-A266 leaned against the back wall, rifle slung, body loose but alert. Sniper's eyes. He probably clocked my loadout the moment I stepped off the bird.
Emile-A239 was seated, blade in hand. A massive bowie knife ran slow, deliberate strokes against a sharpening stone. His helmet—that grim skull motif—tilted toward me in wordless assessment.
And Jorge-052.
Spartan-II. Towering. The kind of presence that made alloy seem like skin. He nodded once, slow and deliberate. Not approval. Acknowledgment.
"Lieutenant," Carter said. "You're Noble Six now. Let's see if you live up to the name."
I met his eyes. "That's the plan."
Kat's voice was dry steel. "ODST helmet. That standard issue now?"
"It works," I answered.
"Guess we'll find out."
Jorge chuckled—low, amused. "The last guy set the bar high."
"I don't plan on dying anytime soon."
Jun's tone was quieter. "Most of us don't. Doesn't change much."
Carter clapped his hands once, sharp. "Enough. We've got a blackout in Visegrad. Comms dropped seventy-two hours ago. No satellites, no pings, no trace. Could be a relay glitch. Could be something worse."
Kat stepped forward, already shifting into op-mode. "We deploy at 0600. Falcon drop. Light recon loadout. Minimal footprint. Primary objective: locate the source of the comms failure. Secondary: eliminate threats if present."
Emile stood, sheathing his knife in a slow, practiced motion. "Been too quiet. Time to stretch."
Carter looked at me one last time, eyes steady. "Twelve hours. Check your kit. Settle in. Be ready."
"Understood."
As the others filed out, Kat gave me a final glance—half challenge, half calculation. Jorge lingered a second longer.
"Spartans don't die," he said quietly. "We just go missing in action."
I didn't answer. Just watched him disappear through the door's hiss and seal.
Noble Six.
The title sat heavy—but not unfamiliar.
The chill of Reach's Highland morning bit across the mountaintop, air thin and edged with frost. Inside my Mark V Mjolnir, the climate was a constant sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit—regulated, pressurized, tuned. Comfortable. But comfort wasn't the problem.
Tension coiled around my shoulders like a second skin.
The team was already in motion.
Emile stood at the edge of the pad, blade in hand, dragging his kukri across a whetstone with slow, methodical precision. Carter hadn't moved from the tactical display fed by Auntie Dot—arms folded, expression carved from stone. Kat's fingers danced across a holo-map terminal, rewriting our insertion vectors while simultaneously monitoring Castle Base's uplink sync. Jun sat crouched by a Pelican's wing, running scope alignment drills on his SRS99, gaze flicking between HUD data and the treeline like he expected the Covenant to crawl from the forest.
And Jorge? The walking tank was threading another belt of .50 caliber through the rig across his back like he was prepping for a siege.
"Jumpkit calibration in progress," Kat's voice crackled across the squad net. I locked mine into the neural spine port and let it spool.
HUD flicker. Green bars. Pulse monitor sync. Altimeter, trajectory, grav-correction—all nominal.
TAI-B312 online.
Link to the Pilot.
Uphold the mission.
Protect the pilot.
Shackled or not, Titan AIs were cutting-edge—compact combat processors optimized for Spartan Mjolnir integration. Real-time threat computation. Munitions diagnostics. Predictive kill-pathing. Not just software—partners. And while we didn't have Smart AIs yet, the tech was climbing. Fast.
Leonidas was the exception. BT-7274 was still in-system, locked into orbital standby aboard the Iroquois under Spartan Logistics Division oversight. If things went hot, SLD had authorization to drop the Titans. But not before.
Auntie Dot's voice filtered through our shared link—calm, sharp-edged, a knife wrapped in velvet.
"Spartan Noble Team, long-range recon confirms Visegrád relay station failure at 0400. Zero comm reestablishments. No satellite uplink. Covenant involvement probable. Blackout Protocol Charlie has been authorized. You are green to proceed."
"Copy," Carter said, turning to us. "No Titans unless SLD gets trigger authority. We stay light, move fast, and get eyes on the station. If it's glassed or crawling, we adapt."
He didn't have to explain the unspoken part. If it was gone, we'd be next.
"Weapons hot, safeties off," Kat added. "Comms silent unless you've got contact. Confirm loadouts and syncs."
Confirmations echoed across the net. My HUD pulsed with bio-readouts from the team, jumpkit status, ammo counts, and AI latency pings. TAI-B312 adjusted my aiming grid before I even realized I'd nudged the rifle.
We moved.
A silent jog, five Spartans and one ghost among them. Boots crunching on frostbitten rock, Mjolnir gyros whispering with every measured stride. No birds. No wind. Just the steady churn of armored movement and the weight of unspoken expectation.
Something was wrong at Visegrád. And we were going to find out what.
We crested the ridge and saw it.
Smoke. Rising in a slow spiral against Reach's pale morning sky—not the dense black of engine oil or structural alloy. This was tinged green at the edges. Plasma signature. High-heat ignition. Something violent and precise.
Below us: a UNSC Army convoy.
Three Warthogs, flipped and charred. Their armor blistered with impact craters and molten scoring. Not from explosives. Plasma. Confirmed. The ground was a grave of abandoned gear—boots knocked free of feet, helmets caved inward, rifles dropped where hands had once clutched them. Blood streaked the dirt in long, deliberate trails, but no bodies.
Just absence.
"Kat," Carter said over the local channel. "Talk to me."
She was already crouched beside one of the vehicles, tapping through a field analysis on her wrist pad. "Scorch patterns match plasma… but not Type-25 or -33. Burn irregularities suggest a non-standard weapon system. Could be Covenant R&D. Could be something worse."
Jorge grunted. "This wasn't a fight. No defensive fire. No spread pattern. It was fast."
Emile had strayed from the perimeter. He crouched near the tree line, visor fixed on a line of darkened grass and blood. "Drag marks. Multiple vectors. They were taken."
I swept my HUD across the surrounding terrain. TAI-B312 amplified the heat residuals and terrain displacement. Patches of grass weren't just scorched—they were melted. Underneath, the soil was glassed. Fragmented. Partial vitrification at surface level.
Not handheld plasma. No infantry-grade weapon burns that hot.
This was internal overload or purpose-built saturation tech—like a directed energy release from a breached containment core.
Auntie Dot pinged in with clinical precision.
"Biometric scan inconclusive. No active life signs within one hundred meters. Recommend elevated threat protocol."
Fred's voice crackled through our secure Spartan-only channel.
"If they're testing field prototypes, we need that data. Kat—mark the site for recovery and intel sweep."
"Tagged," she said, already uploading telemetry to SLD ops command.
I muttered, "Whatever did this… it wasn't chaotic. No random fire. No shell casings. Surgical."
Jun rose from beside a scorched trail, eyes narrowed beneath his visor. "That means time. Not an ambush. Extraction pattern."
Carter cut in, voice cold steel. "Enough theories. We've got our heading. Move out."
The wind shifted. No birds. No insects. Just the crackle of cooling metal.
I glanced once more at the ruined convoy—armor gutted, boots scattered, warthogs flipped like toys. The silence pressed down like pressure before a storm.
We turned downslope—toward Visegrád.
"Smoke from the next structure," Kat called, sharp and controlled. "Single source, tight pattern. Civilian-grade architecture."
"Circle west and get eyes on," Carter ordered. "Noble Team, rules of engagement are green—maintain stealth until confirmed threat. No comms burst. Tight formation."
We descended through shale and frost-bitten brush, armor muffled to a whisper. Mjolnir gyros compensated for the slope, HUDs stabilizing as TAI systems adjusted terrain mapping. The house ahead was old—cliffside construction, weathered, reinforced pre-glassing. The kind of place built to withstand winter, not war.
It sat hunched against the slope, dark windows reflecting the rising smoke. Still. Watching.
We spread out, rifles up.
"Noble Six, you're on point," Carter ordered. "Keep it tight. I'm on your six."
"Copy."
I moved. M392 DMR tight against my shoulder, sightline cutting through the doorway like a scalpel. The structure creaked under its own age—timber frame warped from seasons of neglect and recent violence. Inside, it smelled like burned wood, old earth, and fear. The wrong kind of silence hung in the air. Not peace. Predation.
I swept the interior—two rooms, one collapsed staircase, cold hearth. Empty.
"Noble Leader," Jun's voice came over the net. "Heat signatures. East structure. Stationary. Multiple."
"Mark it. Standby."
I stepped into the dying sunlight just as a Falcon circled overhead, rotors thundering across the valley floor. Jorge dropped in heavy—an armored monolith crashing to the stone courtyard. A beat later, the farmhouse door groaned open.
A man stumbled out.
Civilian. Early forties. Clothes tattered, face gaunt. Hands raised high, shaking. Voice raw.
"Én nem csináltam semmit!"
Panic—pure and unfiltered.
Emile advanced instantly, shotgun raised. "Move! On your knees, now!"
"Ne lőjön! Ne lőjön!"
The man backpedaled, half-tripping on the stone steps.
Jorge stepped in between them. "They're not insurgents," he muttered. "Farmers. Look at their boots. Hands. They've been digging, not fighting."
Carter approached, visor angled. "Ask him what happened."
Jorge nodded, tone shifting. "Mit kerestek itt?"
The man answered fast, words tumbling, face drawn with fear.
"Csak nem akartunk meghalni."
"Hiding," Jorge translated. "Neighbors were attacked last night—screams, gunfire. Silence by sunrise."
Then the man choked back a sob.
"Valami megölte a fiamat."
Jorge's voice darkened. "Says something in the fields killed his son. 'Valami'—not someone."
Carter narrowed his eyes. "What the hell is out here?"
"Commander," Jun interrupted over comms, calm but urgent. "Confirmed heat signatures, structure east. Movement is minimal."
"Copy. Jorge—secure them."
"Azt mondtam, befelé! Gyerünk!" Jorge barked, guiding the civilians back inside. Doors slammed. Manual bolts engaged. Fear turned the farmhouse into a bunker.
Carter's voice came hard. "New objective. Move. Double-time."
Eastern Structure – Blackout Site Echo
July 25, 2552 – 0659 Hours
MISSION STATUS: ESCALATED – EVIDENCE OF EXTREME HOSTILE FORCE
The ridge loomed over us, blackened soil crunching under our boots as we sprinted toward the secondary structure. The wind shifted—carrying the bitter reek of scorched rubber and something deeper. Metallic. Wet.
Iron. And rot.
The building was simple—stone, mortar, half-collapsed roof. We stacked at the door. Carter gave a silent nod. I breached.
The smell hit first.
Copper. Flesh. Burned oil.
The room was dark, lit only by slats of sunlight cutting through shattered windowpanes. Dust danced like ghosts in the beams. And hanging from the ceiling—hooks.
They weren't empty.
UNSC troopers. Mutilated beyond recovery. Stripped of armor, hung like meat in a slaughterhouse. Dog tags clinked faintly as bodies swayed.
Tortured. Systematically.
Emile muttered something low, too quiet to catch. Even he didn't step forward.
Kat did. She advanced with cold efficiency, her HUD casting a sterile blue glow across the scene. A wrist module extended as she initiated tag scans and DNA checks.
Her voice stayed neutral. "Confirmed: UNSC Army personnel. All accounted for. No survivors."
But I caught the change in her breathing. The strain just under the surface. She was Spartan, not unfeeling.
TAI-B312 pulsed a threat indicator.
Likely engagement scenario: hostile non-Covenant entity. Advise heightened alert.
I didn't need the prompt.
This wasn't random. This was message-sending.
And we were standing in the middle of it.
Carter lingered beside me, eyes on the bodies. His voice came low, quiet enough that only the suit's comms picked it up.
"I read your file, Six," he said. "Even the redacted parts."
I didn't answer. Some history is best left buried. You don't carry it into the mission. Not if you want to walk out of it.
"Headhunter, huh?" he continued, stepping closer to the dangling corpses. "Operated in pairs. No backup. No evac. Just a target and a bullet."
He paused, then added with steel in his tone: "Most of those ops weren't against the Covenant."
"Correct," I said. Voice level. No shame. No apology.
"They were human targets. Insurrectionists."
I nodded. "Yes, sir."
He turned to face me, arms folded over his chestplate. "You're not a lone wolf anymore. Noble's not a black-bag cell. We're a unit. You fight with us. Bleed with us. Die with us."
The bodies swayed above us, silent reminders of what happened when people fought alone.
"Understood," I replied.
He nodded. One motion. That was all. No lecture. No warning. Just expectation.
Kat pinged the team. "Positive ID. All five are Army. Last known ping was from the convoy down the slope. This is where they ended up."
I glanced up. The rafters had claw marks. Deep. Precise. No plasma scarring. No detonation rings. Whatever hit them didn't shoot—it tore.
TAI-B312 ALERT:
Pattern recognition anomaly. Damage does not match known Covenant munitions.
The wind howled through the door as we stepped out. The building groaned behind us, still settling, like it remembered the screams.
At the base of the incline, the team reformed in a tight wedge. Eyes scanning the treeline.
This wasn't over. Not by a long shot.
Then my HUD pulsed red.
"Motion," I said, voice clipped.
Three red blips blinked into view—upper floor, structure to the north. The building was half-collapsed, overlooking the ridge crest. A narrow staircase inside fed straight up to the plateau.
"Confirmed," Kat said, tapping through overlays. "Fast movers. Tight pattern."
"Engage," Carter said, voice sharp. "Six, take point."
I moved without hesitation, vaulting the busted stair rail and landing in a crouch outside the door. Jorge hunkered behind a fractured stone wall, machine gun braced and humming low. Kat swept to the rear, checking our six. Emile was already on my flank, kukri gleaming faintly under the fractured skylight.
The lower floor was quiet.
Too quiet.
Furniture overturned. Blood on the floor, dried and black. The walls whispered with tension, wood groaning like it remembered being struck.
TAI-B312 SYSTEM SYNC:
Biometric sweep negative. Movement confirmed. No IFF. Threat status: UNKNOWN.
The red dots shifted.
"Upstairs," Jun called over comms. "They're moving."
I nodded to Emile. We took the stairs two at a time.
At the top: a corridor. Narrow. Chokepoint. Beyond that—sunlight.
The plateau.
Burned-out crates. Shredded tarps. The skeletal frame of what used to be a recon outpost. The walls were scorched with plasma marks. The floor was cracked—something big had landed here. Hard.
The HUD pinged again. Three red dots, center-mass, just behind the last set of doors.
Then they vanished.
Gone.
No movement.
No heat.
No trace.
TAI-B312:
WARNING – VISUAL DISCONNECT. Possible cloaking signature. Scanning…
I raised my rifle slowly. Breathing steady. Eyes locked.
Something was watching us.
And whatever it was, it knew we were here.
"They're heading up the ridge," Carter said, reading our feeds. "Push."
I moved. Kicked the rotting door off its hinges and took point, leading Noble Team onto a narrow switchback carved into the cliffside. One side: jagged slope. The other: a straight drop hundreds of meters down.
Boots crunched against gravel. HUDs pinged terrain instability. The path narrowed, wind picking up, screaming between stone outcrops like a warning. As we ascended, the signs multiplied—burn marks in erratic arcs, shredded foliage, shell casings. Alien footprints—three-toed, talon-shaped, deep impressions like they'd leapt and landed with speed and weight.
Not Covenant Elites. Not even Brutes.
Fast. Precision killers.
We crested the ridge.
That's when the sky screamed.
A thunderous roar shattered the stillness. Three Covenant dropships tore overhead, hulls gleaming in the sun like predatory birds. Their undersides opened.
Shapes dropped fast.
Not Elites. Not Grunts.
Skirmishers.
Sleek, armored bodies. Avian features. Luminous visors flaring gold. Curved energy shields activated mid-drop. They hit the upper ledge hard and scattered like wolves.
A bolt of plasma cracked past my head and detonated against the stone—green energy flaring on impact, vaporizing rock.
"Contact!" Jun snapped, already returning fire.
"Jackal variants—Skirmishers," Kat called out, ducking low and sweeping with her DMR. "Faster, smarter, heavier-armed."
They spread out with calculated intent, diving into the shattered terrain—overturned crates, chunks of satellite architecture, exposed conduit. Plasma lit the air like tracer fire, painting green arcs against the fog rolling in from the north.
The dropships circled back, engines howling like banshees. Their hulls cast long shadows across the cliff face, darkening the field with flickering movement. The ozone in the air thickened—burned earth, scorched circuits. You could taste the charge on your tongue.
Skirmishers launched forward from the uplink structure—plasma bolts hissing like hornets, slicing through the mist in tight groupings.
I dropped into a crouch, snapped up my DMR, and mentally triggered my jumpkit.
TAI-B312 engaged. Trajectory assist calculated. Evade.
My body rocketed sideways, thrusters adjusting my vector mid-jump. Three bolts slammed into the wall where I'd been a second earlier. Stone exploded into shrapnel—my shields pulsed yellow and rolled back to blue within seconds.
"Six is live. Engaging." I fired twice—center mass. One Skirmisher's shield popped in a burst of blue-white static. It screeched, staggered, then dropped under a second shot.
Jorge thundered forward to my left, suppressing hard with his heavy weapon—each burst shredding rock and flushing Skirmishers from cover. "Keep 'em pinned!"
Emile dove into the chaos, blade drawn, his laughter cutting through the squad channel like static.
TAI-B312:
Threat convergence: left flank. Two units attempting to flank behind the relay dish.
"Kat—left flank's hot!"
"Copy!" Her voice was ice. She dropped to one knee, tagged the edge of the relay dish, and dropped two bursts into the approaching contacts. Both dropped—one with a hole burned through its throat, the other slumped into smoke.
Carter fired in controlled bursts, tight and lethal. "Hold the line. We let them breach the structure, we lose our advantage."
Lightning crackled far in the distance. The clouds above shifted dark and fast.
And beneath that growing storm, the ridge turned into a battlefield.
"Engage!" Carter's voice cracked over squad comms like a whip.
Noble Team moved as one. No hesitation. No misstep. Just trained lethality.
Emile surged forward through plasma fire, sliding between boulders. His shotgun barked twice—two Skirmishers folded mid-lunge, shields flaring white-hot before their bodies went still.
Kat vaulted the retaining wall beside me, landing low with her DMR ready. "Flank left. Emile and Jorge are pushing the right."
"On it."
I launched from cover, jumpkit flaring with a controlled burn. Landed behind a patch of scrub brush without a sound. The terrain here was treacherous—cracked stone switchbacks, blind corners, drops that fell into the ravine like open graves. A perfect kill zone.
And the enemy knew it.
Fred laid down suppressive fire with his DMR, rounds popping into a log barricade where three Skirmishers had taken position. Carter backed him up from a perch above, firing precise bursts from his MA5K. One avian figure spun midair and hit the ground like a dropped puppet.
"Skirmisher packs are boxing us in," Jun reported from overwatch.
I checked my motion tracker. Red blips—clustered, coordinated. Multiple squads circling from the eastern ridge.
"They're setting up a pincer," I called.
"Break them before it closes," Carter snapped.
I sprinted across the narrow causeway, vaulting cover, movement fluid. A plasma bolt screamed past my head and shattered against the cliff behind me. I dropped behind a stone pillar, reached for a frag, primed it.
Three-second timer. Arc right. Bounce off the slope.
I lobbed it.
The explosion rocked the ridgeline—a concussive blast that sent dirt, rock, and limbs flying. Two Skirmishers were lifted off their feet, slamming into the stone wall behind them in a broken heap.
Jorge opened up with his rotary cannon. The ridge thundered under the sound—heavy rounds chewed through cover and Covenant alike. A Skirmisher tried to leap clear and got bisected midair.
"Reloading!" Jorge called, steam hissing from his barrel assembly.
Kat was already ahead of the curve—sidestepping around a boulder, her DMR barking twice. A Jackal dropped with a snapped neck and a smoldering throat wound.
TAI-B312 ALERT:
Incoming drop signature. Covenant Spirit-class, ETA fifteen seconds. Eastern airspace.
Then came the sound—different this time.
A low mechanical whine echoed across the mountains. I turned as the Spirit broke through the cloud ceiling, descending fast, belly doors already opening.
Jun's voice followed hard. "Dropship inbound! Reinforcements deploying—Jackals and two Elites, marked Blue."
The Elites.
They hit the ground like thunder—shields flaring to life, plasma rifles raised. Their movement was efficient. Tactical. They barked orders to the Jackals, who spread out instantly, forming a shield wall and laying down suppressive fire.
TAI-B312:
Elite targeting priority designated. Command node confirmed. Recommend evasive maneuvering.
Instinct surged.
Carter's voice cut through the comms like steel. "Six, Kat—fall back. Regroup at the comms tower ruins. West ridge, 150 meters. Move!"
"Copy," I said, ducking as a bolt of sapphire plasma screamed over my shoulder.
I hit the jumpkit—angled left. Propelled up the crumbling wall beside me and vaulted onto a sloped roof plate. My boots hit metal. Kat was already opposite, using the angle to cut off a flanking Jackal with a clean shot to the head.
From this elevation, I saw the Elites clearly.
They weren't charging.
They were commanding. Directing. Coordinating.
This wasn't a skirmish.
It was a hunt.
"Target the commanders," I marked them with HUD beacons, the tags blinking bright red.
Jorge swung his rotary cannon toward the Elites, chaingun spinning up with a mechanical scream. It unleashed a stream of high-velocity rounds that lit the air like tracer fire. The first Elite's shield flared under the barrage, a shifting dome of refracted light. I followed up—DMR raised, reticle locked.
Three rounds.
The shield cracked and collapsed. The Elite staggered.
Kat's shot was clean—high velocity, center mass. It punched through the exposed helmet with a burst of violet mist.
"One down!" she called.
The second Elite roared, activating an energy sword mid-charge.
Emile intercepted.
Steel met plasma with a hiss—the kukri deflecting the first swing just long enough. Sparks showered the ground as the blades collided. They grappled—brutal, raw—until Emile slipped the knife under the Elite's arm and planted a plasma grenade on its hip.
"Say goodnight," he growled.
A boost from his jumpkit carried him clear. The explosion shredded the Elite in a spray of molten armor and burned meat.
TAI-B312:
Command threat neutralized. Remaining targets destabilized.
"Clear the rest!" Carter barked.
We advanced. No hesitation. The Jackals broke formation—leaderless and panicked. Kat picked off two. Fred dropped one mid-sprint with a tight burst. I swept through the flank, thermal active, locating heat signatures and eliminating stragglers. Each target fell in seconds.
In just under four minutes, a superior enemy force had been reduced to a smoldering crater of twisted metal and split bone.
That was the Spartan difference.
The air stank of vaporized polymer, scorched plasma, and overcooked flesh. Wind returned to the ridge, moving through the trees like a whispered sigh. Nearby, bushes still burned with residual heat, crackling softly.
"Area secure," I said.
"Confirmed," Carter replied. "Regroup on me. Auntie Dot has a lock—the signal disruption originates inside the old relay station, due north."
Noble Team formed up without a word, boots moving in synch as we filtered through the treeline—weapons hot, visors scanning. The ridge grew steeper, choked with smoke drifting up from the valley like a funeral pyre for the convoy below.
TAI-B312 status report:
IFF sweep active
Environmental sync: 92% terrain match to ONI Archive 7F-Visegrád
No confirmed Covenant comm traffic in current band
Signal interference remains high. Source proximity: ~500m
We advanced under a blackened canopy of alpine trees—scarred by fire, splintered by plasma. The ground underfoot was gravel and ash. Every step stirred dust, dislodged debris. Old satellite cabling snaked through the brush like rusted vines.
No chatter. No idle thoughts. Just the sound of movement. Controlled. Intentional.
Spartans.
"Contact range under five hundred meters," Kat said, eyes on her HUD.
"Whatever's jamming comms, it's inside that station. And it's still active."
Whatever had killed an entire Army convoy, torn apart a farmhouse, and hijacked an entire relay hub was inside.
We were going in after it.
Jun's voice cut across the channel, low and urgent. "Multiple heat signatures ahead. Engagement in progress. Friendly IFFs confirmed—UNSC Army troopers."
"Move to assist," Carter ordered without hesitation.
We crested the ridge, visors flaring against the rising smoke.
Below, in a jagged basin of broken rock and blackened scrub, three battered fireteams were dug in—defensive perimeter cobbled together from scorched Warthogs, overturned supply crates, and cracked stone. Plasma fire lit the air, slamming into cover and ricocheting off scattered debris.
Just beyond the treeline: Covenant.
Jackals in tight formations, shields locked. Grunts throwing volleys of pink needlefire that detonated on impact. A single Elite stood at their rear—blood-red armor, plasma repeater in hand, barked orders sharp enough to carry over the chaos.
Field Marshal.
"Target confirmed," Carter said, calm as ever. "Noble Team—engage. Six, on me."
We dropped into the valley like phantoms.
I launched forward, jumpkit flaring. Landed hard beside a pinned trooper crouched behind a fractured slab of rock. His helmet was half-melted from a plasma hit.
His eyes widened. "Spartan!"
"Stay low," I told him. "We're clearing the path."
Kat swung right, precision shots from her M6G dropping Grunts mid-throw. Emile hit the left flank like a warhammer—shotgun booming, blade flashing. Jorge moved up the gut, rotary cannon spitting thunder into the Covenant center line.
"Go!" Carter barked. "Push through! Regroup with Sierra!"
We swept the clearing with ruthless efficiency. Skirmishers broke ranks first. Grunts followed—scatter tactics in full effect. The Elite tried to regroup, but a coordinated burst from Jorge and Kat blew out his shields, and my DMR dropped him with a shot to the throat.
Jun's DMR echoed overhead—clean shots, deliberate. He picked off the stragglers as they retreated into the smoke.
Two minutes. One assault force neutralized.
Carter moved to the remaining Army troops—twelve, bloodied but standing.
"Report."
A sergeant stepped forward, torn pauldron half hanging from his shoulder. "Sergeant Harlan, Sierra Company. Covenant hit us hard. Knocked out the comms array and buried us under fire. We held the perimeter, but we couldn't breach the relay."
Kat stepped beside Carter. "Survivors?"
"Twelve, including myself. We were eighteen before the last push."
Carter nodded grimly. "We're taking the relay. Six, Emile—you're with Fireteam Alpha. Kat, Jun—support Beta. Jorge, you're with me on Gamma."
TAI-B312:
Syncing fireteam telemetry… HUD integration complete. Shared sensor data uplink active.
I locked HUDs with Corporal Mahler—Alpha's lead. His team was low on ammo, armor scorched, but their posture straightened the moment I stepped in. That Spartan effect. Fear turned to fire.
"Move on my mark," Carter said. "No more waiting. We breach the station, clear the signal source, and shut this down. Every second we delay, more die."
Jorge tossed fresh mags to the fireteams—standardized AR and DMR loads. Mahler's squad grabbed them like oxygen.
Emile wiped blood from his visor with the back of a gauntlet. "Hope the bastards left the door unlocked."
The wind picked up again—mountain air sharp and tense, carrying the smell of burned ozone and churned soil.
The valley went quiet.
Like the world knew what was coming next.
Carter gave the signal.
"Let's finish this."
We turned toward the ridge. Just over the next rise, buried like a secret in the stone, stood the relay station.
The air was heavy—choked with ozone, scorched soil, and static charge. Even the wind felt tense.
We advanced quickly, boots crunching against fractured gravel as the terrain funneled into a narrow pass. The station loomed ahead through drifting smoke—squat, angular, sheathed in alloy and half-fused comms cables, like something left to die in the rock.
And the Covenant had dug in.
"AA emplacements and fixed turrets on south and east," Jun reported. "They're waiting."
"They always are," Emile growled, flicking his M45's safety and racking a shell.
Kat slid into cover beside me. "Calling in support. Auntie Dot's cleared the local airspace."
Emile's grin came fast. "About damn time."
Two sonic cracks shattered the sky.
The clouds split as high-altitude drop pods pierced the atmosphere—streaking flame and thunder behind them. Impact vectors were perfect. Twin pods slammed into the plateau like falling gods, ejecting shockwaves of dust and shrapnel.
From the craters stepped Titans.
Emile's Vanguard-class was first—matte black with skull insignia, brutalist frame, heavy on armor and shock payloads. Kat's Atlas-frame followed—sleeker, more sensor arrays, multi-channel uplinks webbed across its chassis.
Both synced immediately.
"Deployable cover online," Emile's Titan AI rumbled, voice like grinding stone.
"Weapons hot. Standing by."
"Auntie Dot," Kat called. "Route artillery targeting to Titan systems."
"Confirmed," came Dot's clinical response.
"Covenant shielding signatures identified. Calculating impact vectors."
Morale surged. The Army troopers around us stood taller—shoulders back, weapons ready. You could see it in their faces.
We had Titans now.
Kat and Jorge began coordinating squads through real-time tac-net overlays. Carter took the forward column, his voice sharp and absolute.
"Jun, call it."
"Snipers on the upper spires. Recommend suppression before the advance."
I synced with TAI-B312 via neural interface.
"Tag targets. Overlapping fire arcs. Suppression protocols, now."
Confirmed. Solutions locked. Chambering rounds. Fire in three... two..."
Kat's Atlas opened up—chaingun hammering skyward, chewing into the sniper nests. Emile's Vanguard moved like a monster, loosing a storm of smart missiles into the tree line. The fixed turrets didn't stand a chance.
"Six—on me," Carter ordered.
We broke left, moving through the smoke. Plasma fire came fast—turquoise and violet bolts flashing past. Deployable Titan cover slammed into the dirt like bunker walls, allowing the Army squads to leapfrog forward.
Then came the countercharge.
A knot of Grunts exploded from behind a rock, war cries cutting through the gunfire.
I dropped them in three precise bursts. No hesitation. No drama.
An Elite came next—lumbering from the flank with a plasma rifle flaring.
Emile didn't even blink. His Titan slammed a shockwave pulse into the ground, launching the Elite back. Then came the kill—armored gauntlet, full momentum, straight into the chest.
The relay's defenses began to crumble.
Kat's Titan AI:
"Shield generator tagged. Forward battery—firing."
The impact obliterated the front emplacement. Smoke. Fire. Debris. The way inside was clear.
Carter: "Breach. Stack up."
We moved to the blackened breach, fire at our backs and victory in reach.
Inside, there would be chaos.
That was fine.
We were Spartans.
We were the storm.
The breach point glowed faintly with residual heat, its jagged edges still steaming from the blast Emile's Titan had driven through the main entrance. Smoke hung thick in the air, plasma-stained and ghostlike, coiling through the dim corridor light and slipping around our visors like it had intent.
We pushed through the station's scorched interior.
"Clear left. Emile, you're rear," Carter ordered.
The relay station was tight—hallways built for technicians, not fireteams. Knee-high server racks lined the walls, half-vaporized. Viewports shattered. Cables hung like vines from torn conduits, sparking with dying energy.
Blood streaked the floor.
UNSC trooper red—dark, old, and wide. The remains of a last stand were scattered everywhere: shredded BDUs, burned-out boots, melted chest plates still smoldering in corners.
We advanced by the book. Stack. Sweep. Clear. Every turn, every breach—executed with precision. What Covenant forces remained were fragmented, wounded, and easy prey. A few Grunts ran. None escaped.
Outside, the Titans loomed in overwatch—sensor arrays humming, barrels ready. Army troopers solidified the perimeter, fortifying entry lanes and setting fallback points. Auntie Dot relayed real-time adjustments to the field grid, shifting suppressive fire zones and redundancy fields like a digital chessboard.
Inside, we regrouped at the central terminal chamber.
It was a graveyard.
The mainframe had taken a deliberate beating. Plasma scoring across every major component. Central data core cracked and bleeding smoke. Monitors shattered. Melted keypads dripped plastic and circuitry.
A last stand.
Bodies ringed the room. Dead soldiers positioned for defense—cover fire arcs, overlapping lines, good placements. It hadn't helped. Their weapons lay dry. Power packs vented. Nothing left but final intent.
Jorge stepped forward, voice heavy. "They fought to the last."
I knelt by a fallen corporal, chestplate half-vaporized. One hand still gripped a combat knife buried in the steel wall beside him. He'd made it personal.
Didn't matter.
Kat moved to the remains of the core. Her fingers hovered just above it—neural interface already syncing as she dove into system salvage.
"Central uplink's fried," she muttered. "Rerouting through backups."
A pause. Her brow furrowed behind the visor.
"This wasn't suppression. This was erasure. The Covenant didn't want this place offline. They wanted it… wiped."
We scanned the room again.
Jun swept toward the far end with his DMR, motion scanner live. "Clear. No movement."
Then—a sound.
A soft clatter of metal. Behind a collapsed shelf of data drives.
Jorge's Titan AI pinged a warning across HUDs.
He moved without hesitation. One armored hand tossed the debris aside, revealing a shape curled behind it—small, human.
A young woman in a shredded lab coat, knees pulled to her chest, eyes wide with trauma. Her skin was streaked with soot and blood. She flinched as Jorge approached.
He knelt, removed his helmet.
His voice softened. "You're safe. It's over. We've got you."
Her breath caught in her throat. She looked past him—eyes sweeping across the shattered room, the wreckage, the bodies.
And stopped.
One body lay just beyond the console. A man in technician armor. Pale, burned. Still.
Her voice broke. "Dad."
She rose slowly—unsteady. Crossed the floor like it weighed a hundred tons. She reached for him, then froze, hands trembling.
And broke.
She collapsed beside him in a heap of quiet sobs, shoulders shaking. Grief poured out—not loud, not explosive. Just deep. Real.
None of us moved.
Kat approached, knelt beside her, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "We'll recover what we can. I'll need time. This station had redundancies—we'll find them."
The woman didn't answer.
She just wept.
And for a moment, even the Titans outside stood still.
I turned away, rifle shouldered, eyes scanning the shadows.
Something was wrong.
Too few bodies. Too little resistance. The silence wasn't just heavy—it was intentional.
And when silence is too perfect?
You're never alone.
My motion tracker screamed crimson.
A blur of refracted light exploded from the shadows, slamming into me with bone-breaking force. My MA5 clattered away. I hit the bulkhead hard—vision strobing, air ripped from my lungs. Plasma seared the space where my head had just been. My shields shrieked in alarm, dropping to 24%.
I twisted, combat knife drawn, just as the shimmer resolved into a monster.
Covenant Zealot.
Gold-trimmed armor. Elite class. Precision killers. Smarter, stronger, faster—and they knew it.
The thing snarled—mandibles wide, breath hot and reeking of blood as it brought its energy sword down in a killing arc.
Instinct took over.
I slammed my left boot into its sword arm, deflecting the blow. Sparks exploded as the blade bit into the deckplate. I drove my knife into the exposed seam beneath its mandibles—felt resistance, then give. Hot, viscous blood sprayed.
It roared, staggering.
I rolled under its swing and surged upward—drove my knee into its armored chest, sent it sprawling into a scorched server bank in a shower of sparks.
Across the room—another shimmer moved.
"MOVE!" Jorge bellowed.
The woman screamed.
Jorge surged forward like a tank, grabbed her, and rolled behind a structural pillar just as a second energy sword carved the air where she'd been. The blade hissed, casting blue light like a blade-shaped flare.
She sobbed—clinging to him as he covered her with his bulk.
"Multiple cloaks!" Kat snapped, firing controlled bursts. "We're compromised!"
"On the ridge—flanking!" Jun reported. "Snipers repositioning!"
The second Zealot engaged Emile in close quarters. Both moved like bladed shadows.
Emile ducked a decapitating slash, countered with the haft of his shotgun, then whipped his kukri into the Elite's side. It howled, cloak flaring. Still not dead.
Another shimmer—larger.
Dragging something.
A human.
UNSC Army. Uniform torn, face bruised, wrists bound. Alive.
"Hold fire!" Carter snapped.
The two surviving Zealots began backing toward the server room's main doors—energy swords up, flickering cloaks failing from damage. Their prisoner between them—barely conscious.
"Don't—!" Jorge started.
Too late.
The doors slammed shut with a metallic boom, locking with a Covenant security seal.
Beyond them, the soldier screamed.
Then silence.
Carter turned to us, jaw clenched. "Six. Emile. With me. Go."
I grabbed my MA5, racked the slide. "Copy."
Emile was already on the move, blood running from a slash to his shoulder—he didn't care. "Time to end these bastards."
TAI-B312:
Tracking failed. Zealot cloaks disrupting biometric lock. Proceed with caution.
Carter turned to Kat and Jorge. "Loop west. Cut them off. Jun, extraction on the civilian—don't let anything through."
Jorge guided the woman back toward the pillar. His Titan, still standing sentinel outside, rotated—targeting optics sweeping the ridge.
Emile and I didn't wait.
We pushed into the maintenance hatch—tight, narrow, claustrophobic. Lights flickered overhead.
Server housing access tunnel.
The hatch sealed behind us with a hiss of pressurized air.
Alone now.
Just us.
And whatever waited in the dark.
Emile took point, shotgun up, movements fluid but wired tight. I followed, rifle ready, muzzle high, eyes scanning every pulse of shadow.
The server core felt like a different world.
The space was massive—cathedral-like, cold and full of noise. Towering data stacks loomed in rows, stretching up into shadow. The air hissed constantly—supercooled conduits groaning as processors dumped heat in thick columns of fog. Every few seconds, one of the server pillars would rise from the floor, venting with a shriek that sent static lancing across our HUDs before our systems recalibrated.
Steam. Noise. Flickering lights. A hunter's dream.
Or a death trap.
The Zealots had a head start—but they weren't cloaked anymore. Not with trails of glowing violet blood streaking the grated floor, and mist catching their outlines in fractured light.
We moved through the narrow lanes between the stacks, every step slow and silent. The tension hung between us like coiled wire.
Then—motion.
A shimmer flicked left.
Emile pivoted on instinct, M45 raised.
BOOM.
The shotgun echoed like thunder in the enclosed space. The Zealot's helm exploded inward—metal and bone and brain matter splashing across the venting column beside it. The Elite's body hit the floor like dropped metal, its blood hissing against the cold steel.
"Contact down!" Emile barked.
No time to breathe. I swept left around a vertical conduit bank—and there it was.
Second Zealot. Wounded. Desperate.
Its energy sword flared to life just as a venting cycle hissed between us, masking my approach in thick fog. I charged through the mist, ducked under its first swing, and slammed into its chest with my shoulder.
It staggered backward, crashing into the wall with enough force to dent alloy. It roared, slashing wildly—blade carving a glowing arc through one of the cooling pipes. Supercooled mist exploded, blinding.
I let my rifle drop to its sling and drew my sidearm one-handed—M6G, hard sights.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Rounds slammed into the Zealot's torso—sparks and fluid bursting from its armor. It tried to rise. I took one step forward and fired again—direct hit to the neck seam.
Its shield collapsed with a shuddering pulse. The last round punched through flesh and spine.
The Elite dropped—hard—crumpling to its knees. A bubbling gurgle escaped its throat as its sword flickered and died.
I watched it fall.
Emile exhaled through clenched teeth. "Clean."
But we weren't done.
My motion tracker pinged. I spun—saw nothing. Checked again. Static.
Then—faint red. Rear quadrant.
"Movement," I warned.
We stepped back-to-back as the server room shifted around us—more stacks venting, new columns rising. A shriek of metal echoed from somewhere deeper.
Another shimmer flashed left. Then right. Faster this time.
TAI-B312:
Threat signatures converging. Third contact confirmed. Direction: 1 o'clock—fast.
I raised my rifle. Nothing.
Until—
The Zealot lunged from above—using the spine of the server columns like a catwalk. It dropped hard. Emile blocked the blade with his forearm plate, shields flaring to critical as he stumbled back. I fired into its back—tight bursts. The Zealot roared, whirled on me, and slashed.
I ducked—its blade missing my visor by inches.
Emile recovered. Slammed into its back. Knife in hand. He grabbed the Elite by the neck joint and drove the blade in deep—up under the mandibles and into the brain stem.
The Zealot twitched once.
Then dropped like a stone.
"Clear," I panted.
"You sure?" Emile growled, scanning with his visor. "These bastards don't know when to quit."
Nothing moved.
The server room hissed again—venting heat into the cold quiet.
"Noble Actual," Emile said into comms, "This is Noble Two and Six. Targets eliminated. Relay core secure."
There was a pause—then Carter's voice crackled through.
"Copy. Fall in."
I turned, eyes scanning the server tower again. Mist drifted between shattered data cores and blood-streaked steel.
We moved to recover the captured trooper.
This wasn't over.
But for now?
The ghosts were dead.