August 30, 2552 20:00 Hours
Jane-B312, the last known surviving member of the Spartan Noble Team, stood on the platform, staring into the dust cloud that surrounded her. The mountains in the distance were still visible, but everything at ground level was vanishing into a never ending cloud of dust and ash. The Covenant would have glassed almost every city on the planet by now, she thought sadly. Every settlement burned, every satellite blasted out of orbit. Even in her armor, she was sweating from the heat, and for a moment, she remembered her second visit to Sword Base, the ice shelf it rested on melted away, the forests nothing but ash... and the Covenant hadn’t even glassed that part of the planet at the time.
For a moment, her thoughts drifted back to Jorge. Even after decades in the Spartan program - thirty five years, she realised in surprise, remembering what he’d let slip, telling her about the legendary Doctor Halsey - the mans heart had still been with Reach. It was obvious with his accent, his words... his sacrifice. When someone had to stay behind to detonate the makeshift bomb, it was always going to be him. It had to be.
And maybe it was better that way. Jorge died believing he saved his world from the Covenant. His last moments had been satisfaction with a job well done. He hadn’t seen hundreds of Covenant ships jump in only minutes later, hadn’t seen Reach burn... hadn’t watched his teammates die, one by one.
Kat, though horrible chance, when the glassing of New Alexandria flatlined their shields, giving a sniper a clean shot. Carter, bleeding out despite his armors best efforts, killing a Scarab with his Pelican to give her and Emile a chance to get the package to the Pillar of Autumn. Emile, gutted from behind by an Elite, yet still strong enough, angry enough, to turn and kill the alien with his own knife before death claimed him too.
Maybe Jun was still alive. Maybe he got Halsey to Castle Base, and they both retreated deep underground, fleeing the Covenant plasma. Or maybe not. She’d likely never know.
And then there was her. Noble Six, the newest member of the team. Before she’d arrived on Reach to join the squad, less then six weeks ago, she’d been a lone wolf, sent in to a thousand different combat zones to make the Covenant and Insurrectionists disappear, be it on the ground, or in her Sabre. She’d come so close to escaping Reach. She’d handed the package, the mystery AI to Captain Keyes... and then Emile had fallen, and someone had to man the MAC Cannon.
She didn’t regret it, not really. It was her duty, and a simple choice. Either she never got off Reach, or everyone on the Autumn didn’t. She just hoped that whatever that AI knew, where ever Halsey had been sending it off to, that it had been worth it. That Noble Team, that Reach, hadn’t died for nothing.
She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. Now there was nothing to do but wait, she supposed. The temperature was still climbing, and soon, it would probably reach temperatures that even a Spartan couldn’t survive. Cooking to death. After everything, it seemed a rather... anti-climatic way to die.
Opening her eyes again, she opened a panel on her left forearm and entered a series of commands on the keypad there. A window appeared in her helmet visor, displaying the squad roster of Noble Team
CARTER-A259 - ACTIVE
CATHERINE-B320 - MIA
JUN-A266 - ACTIVE
EMILE-A239 - ACTIVE
JORGE-052 - MIA
JANE-B312 - ACTIVE
Missing In Action. No Spartan was allowed to officially die. An ONI directive. It would be bad for morale if the average trooper and civilian knew that their super soldier defenders could die. She snorted bitterly. It wasn’t fair to her teammates, her friends, that they’d never even get the dignity of a funeral, of that measure of respect from the people they died for... but that was what it meant to be a Spartan. To fight, to die, and even in death, keep fighting in some odd way.
Highlighting both Carter and Emile, she re-designated them both MIA, then paused, looking at her own name. She considered it for a moment, then placed herself on the MIA list as well. It would be true soon enough, she suspected. It wouldn’t be as immediate as the other deaths. The moment of glory that went with her death was hours ago now...
Or maybe not, she thought as she heard the sound of engines. Covenant, most likely a Phantom troop transport, moving towards her. “Shame I don’t have a rocket launcher,” she said quietly, then frowned. It was slowing down. As she watched, the vehicle emerged from the dust cloud, circling her position, but not firing. In the distance, she could hear at least one more transport, possibly more. They came into view, circling the same way. Banshees provided air cover, but none of them were firing on her.
Elites. It had to be. The honor-driven idiots must have worked out that she was a military survivor, possibly even a Spartan. Their code of honor couldn’t possibly pass up an opportunity like this.
Two transports, maybe more coming. The heat was going to kill her eventually, but maybe she could get on board one of the Phantoms first. And if not... well, dying in battle against the Covenant, dragging as many of them to hell with her as possible? That seemed like a good way for a Spartan to go.
Jane checked her sidearm, made certain her DMR had a full clip, then stepped down off the platform and walked through the dust towards the aliens.
The first transport was already taking off as she approached, leaving two Elites and a collection of grunts behind. The smaller aliens were still getting their bearings when she lobbed a grenade into their midst and blew them to hell. The larger aliens returned fire, but her DMR already had the shields of one of them flaring into visibility, and a few seconds later it failed entirely, right before she put one more round through its head. Its squadmate roared and ran towards her, giving her a clean shot long enough to drop its shields and kill it the same way.
Banshees flew overhead, but they didn’t fire yet, simply watching. She could hear another Phantom in the distance, and she turned, seeing more Coveant soldiers through the dust. Ejecting the mostly empty clip from her rifle and replacing it, she raised it to her shoulder, looked through the scope and fired, punching through a Jackals rib cage.
Soon, she began to lose track of time, of her actions. Her DMR ran dry, she took a plasma repeater from the corpse of an Elite. She found the body of a dead army trooper and claimed his sniper rifle, leading the aliens on a chase through the ruins for several minutes, killing at least a dozen Elites. A burnt out building held a dead squad and a Spartan Laser, which she claimed and used to discourage the Banshees once they began to try and attack her as well. Through the dust and the noise of alien weapons, she could hear screams of rage and pain... and fear. They’d been so certain that even if it was a Spartan, it was just one human.
She was proving them wrong. She was reminding the aliens just why they’d come to fear the Spartans as demons.
A plasma grenade explosion caught her by surprise, the blast flatlining her shields, and she stumbled, turning to face the grunts as they ran at her. Two of them had pulled out more grenades and armed them, breaking into the awkward run of a suicide charge, and she drew her pistol, headshotting one of them and letting its grenades kill the rest. Her helmet visor cracked as something hit it hard (Needle round, didn’t manage to grab, a part of her mind said), and she turned to fire on Jackals, even as she searched for cover.
By the time her shields restored themselves, a pair of needles had hit her in the waist and exploded. Medical warnings were flashing in her visor, even as it began to flicker and die, and she knew then that her hopes of capturing a Covenant transport were done. She was going to die here. So be it.
An Elite charged at her, energy sword crackling in the fading light, and she twisted to the side, letting it stumble past her, before reaching up, grabbing its head and twisting. Despite her injuries, despite her exhaustion, her strength was still good, and the aliens neck snapped as its head was twisted around almost a hundred and eighty degrees.
She fell back again, limping now, pulling her Spartan laser from her back and spending the last of its power cell on a shot through a Phantoms cockpit. The transport crashed to the ground and flipped, and she threw the now useless weapon away, firing her pistol again.
The end was in sight now, she knew that, but she kept fighting. Twelve more grunts, three Jackals and seven Elites died before a bone breaking hits of a concussion rifle threw her across the ground, destroying her overtaxed shields and destroying her visor completely.
Jane pulled herself to her knees and reached up, pulling her helmet off and throwing it aside. Plasma fire from an Elite ahead of her caught her attention and she looked to see the alien closing in, and an MA37 on the ground ahead of her. Stumbling forward, she grabbed the weapon and opened fire, chewing through its shields and then its head. Around her, she could hear the angry snarl of the aliens, their language still as strange as ever, but as the smaller aliens fell back, she understood the order. The Elites knew it was time to kill the demon, and only they would get that honor.
She never realized that her helmets camera could see her last stand, was recording her as an Elite moved in behind her, growling and readying its energy blade. She heard it coming and spun, slamming her rifle into its face and making it fall backwards, then drew her sidearm and shot it twice in the head. Plasma fire to her left drew her attention and she turned, firing into another Elite, dropping its shields, before yet another elite fired on her. Screaming her defiance now, Jane turned her rifle onto that target, aiming her pistol at the first Elite and killing it with a series of quick shots. The second Elite died as her rifle ran out of ammunition, and then another, an Ultra, charged her.
Grabbing her chestplate, it threw her back onto the ground, then lunged at her, sword raised in a killing blow. Her foot caught him in the stomach, stopping the lunge and throwing it back, even as one more Elite, this one a Zealot, charged in. Her pistol fired one last time before locking open, knocking the sword from its hand and making the beast stumble. The lunging Elite came back, slamming a hoof on her injured chest, and she screamed in pain and anger, pulling her combat knife from its sheath and stabbing it into her enemies thigh. It fell back with a scream, and then that last Elite came in again, holding a smaller energy knife in its hand and snarling...
And then there was nothing.
***
July 7, 2589
“The beacon’s three hundred meters this way,” the naval officer said, walking across the grass covered field.
“What was this place?” one of the marines wondered, glancing at the occasional fragment of rusting metal emerging from the dirt.
“According to the files, there was a navy shipyard not far from here, back before the Covenant glassed the place,” the Commander replied. He shook his head. “Not that you’d know, looking at it now.”
“It’s weird,” another marine said. “My dad told me stories about this world. About what happened here. But right here, right now, you can’t really tell.”
“I guess this planet’s more durable then one might expect,” the Commander said, then pointed. “There’s the signal.” He stepped forward and knelt down, picking up a battered helmet. “UNSC helmet... I think it’s a Spartan helmet,” he added, his voice slightly awed.
“I think you might be right sir.” The man looked over to see a marine kneeling down over a half-buried form, almost hidden in the grass. “Female, looks like modified Mark Five armor,” she reported.
“More bodies over here,” another marine called out. “Mostly rotted, but the armor and skeletons, I’d say Grunts and Jackals, lots of them.”
“No Brutes or Elites?” someone wondered.
“The Elites would have recovered their dead,” the Commander said. “They’d have left the lower ranked bodies here.” He plugged a datapad into the helmets external port, and nodded in satisfaction as the old helmets hard drive responded to the power source. “Got an id. Jane-B312, Noble Team. She’s a Spartan-Three. There’s a lot of footage in this thing. Combat recordings. Buck, call the ship, let them know we’re going to need a full recovery team. We’ve got fallen soldiers here to recover.”
“On it sir,” the woman replied. The Commander looked at the helmet, then at the body of the fallen Spartan. Protocol was clear on what to do with her. She was to be taken back to Earth and buried with full honors at the Spartan Memorial Cemetary, outside the Ark.
She’d earned so much more then that, but the UNSC would do what it could to honor her sacrifice.
***
"It didn't take long for Reach to fall. Our enemy was ruthless. Efficient. But they weren't nearly fast enough. For you had already passed the torch. And because of you, we found Halo, unlocked its secrets, shattered our enemy's resolve. Our victory - your victory - was so close... I wish you could have lived to see it. But you belong to Reach. Your body, your armor - all burned and turned to glass. Everything, except your courage. That, you gave to us. And with it, we can rebuild."
Jane-B312, the last known surviving member of the Spartan Noble Team, stood on the platform, staring into the dust cloud that surrounded her. The mountains in the distance were still visible, but everything at ground level was vanishing into a never ending cloud of dust and ash. The Covenant would have glassed almost every city on the planet by now, she thought sadly. Every settlement burned, every satellite blasted out of orbit. Even in her armor, she was sweating from the heat, and for a moment, she remembered her second visit to Sword Base, the ice shelf it rested on melted away, the forests nothing but ash... and the Covenant hadn’t even glassed that part of the planet at the time.
For a moment, her thoughts drifted back to Jorge. Even after decades in the Spartan program - thirty five years, she realised in surprise, remembering what he’d let slip, telling her about the legendary Doctor Halsey - the mans heart had still been with Reach. It was obvious with his accent, his words... his sacrifice. When someone had to stay behind to detonate the makeshift bomb, it was always going to be him. It had to be.
And maybe it was better that way. Jorge died believing he saved his world from the Covenant. His last moments had been satisfaction with a job well done. He hadn’t seen hundreds of Covenant ships jump in only minutes later, hadn’t seen Reach burn... hadn’t watched his teammates die, one by one.
Kat, though horrible chance, when the glassing of New Alexandria flatlined their shields, giving a sniper a clean shot. Carter, bleeding out despite his armors best efforts, killing a Scarab with his Pelican to give her and Emile a chance to get the package to the Pillar of Autumn. Emile, gutted from behind by an Elite, yet still strong enough, angry enough, to turn and kill the alien with his own knife before death claimed him too.
Maybe Jun was still alive. Maybe he got Halsey to Castle Base, and they both retreated deep underground, fleeing the Covenant plasma. Or maybe not. She’d likely never know.
And then there was her. Noble Six, the newest member of the team. Before she’d arrived on Reach to join the squad, less then six weeks ago, she’d been a lone wolf, sent in to a thousand different combat zones to make the Covenant and Insurrectionists disappear, be it on the ground, or in her Sabre. She’d come so close to escaping Reach. She’d handed the package, the mystery AI to Captain Keyes... and then Emile had fallen, and someone had to man the MAC Cannon.
She didn’t regret it, not really. It was her duty, and a simple choice. Either she never got off Reach, or everyone on the Autumn didn’t. She just hoped that whatever that AI knew, where ever Halsey had been sending it off to, that it had been worth it. That Noble Team, that Reach, hadn’t died for nothing.
She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. Now there was nothing to do but wait, she supposed. The temperature was still climbing, and soon, it would probably reach temperatures that even a Spartan couldn’t survive. Cooking to death. After everything, it seemed a rather... anti-climatic way to die.
Opening her eyes again, she opened a panel on her left forearm and entered a series of commands on the keypad there. A window appeared in her helmet visor, displaying the squad roster of Noble Team
CARTER-A259 - ACTIVE
CATHERINE-B320 - MIA
JUN-A266 - ACTIVE
EMILE-A239 - ACTIVE
JORGE-052 - MIA
JANE-B312 - ACTIVE
Missing In Action. No Spartan was allowed to officially die. An ONI directive. It would be bad for morale if the average trooper and civilian knew that their super soldier defenders could die. She snorted bitterly. It wasn’t fair to her teammates, her friends, that they’d never even get the dignity of a funeral, of that measure of respect from the people they died for... but that was what it meant to be a Spartan. To fight, to die, and even in death, keep fighting in some odd way.
Highlighting both Carter and Emile, she re-designated them both MIA, then paused, looking at her own name. She considered it for a moment, then placed herself on the MIA list as well. It would be true soon enough, she suspected. It wouldn’t be as immediate as the other deaths. The moment of glory that went with her death was hours ago now...
Or maybe not, she thought as she heard the sound of engines. Covenant, most likely a Phantom troop transport, moving towards her. “Shame I don’t have a rocket launcher,” she said quietly, then frowned. It was slowing down. As she watched, the vehicle emerged from the dust cloud, circling her position, but not firing. In the distance, she could hear at least one more transport, possibly more. They came into view, circling the same way. Banshees provided air cover, but none of them were firing on her.
Elites. It had to be. The honor-driven idiots must have worked out that she was a military survivor, possibly even a Spartan. Their code of honor couldn’t possibly pass up an opportunity like this.
Two transports, maybe more coming. The heat was going to kill her eventually, but maybe she could get on board one of the Phantoms first. And if not... well, dying in battle against the Covenant, dragging as many of them to hell with her as possible? That seemed like a good way for a Spartan to go.
Jane checked her sidearm, made certain her DMR had a full clip, then stepped down off the platform and walked through the dust towards the aliens.
The first transport was already taking off as she approached, leaving two Elites and a collection of grunts behind. The smaller aliens were still getting their bearings when she lobbed a grenade into their midst and blew them to hell. The larger aliens returned fire, but her DMR already had the shields of one of them flaring into visibility, and a few seconds later it failed entirely, right before she put one more round through its head. Its squadmate roared and ran towards her, giving her a clean shot long enough to drop its shields and kill it the same way.
Banshees flew overhead, but they didn’t fire yet, simply watching. She could hear another Phantom in the distance, and she turned, seeing more Coveant soldiers through the dust. Ejecting the mostly empty clip from her rifle and replacing it, she raised it to her shoulder, looked through the scope and fired, punching through a Jackals rib cage.
Soon, she began to lose track of time, of her actions. Her DMR ran dry, she took a plasma repeater from the corpse of an Elite. She found the body of a dead army trooper and claimed his sniper rifle, leading the aliens on a chase through the ruins for several minutes, killing at least a dozen Elites. A burnt out building held a dead squad and a Spartan Laser, which she claimed and used to discourage the Banshees once they began to try and attack her as well. Through the dust and the noise of alien weapons, she could hear screams of rage and pain... and fear. They’d been so certain that even if it was a Spartan, it was just one human.
She was proving them wrong. She was reminding the aliens just why they’d come to fear the Spartans as demons.
A plasma grenade explosion caught her by surprise, the blast flatlining her shields, and she stumbled, turning to face the grunts as they ran at her. Two of them had pulled out more grenades and armed them, breaking into the awkward run of a suicide charge, and she drew her pistol, headshotting one of them and letting its grenades kill the rest. Her helmet visor cracked as something hit it hard (Needle round, didn’t manage to grab, a part of her mind said), and she turned to fire on Jackals, even as she searched for cover.
By the time her shields restored themselves, a pair of needles had hit her in the waist and exploded. Medical warnings were flashing in her visor, even as it began to flicker and die, and she knew then that her hopes of capturing a Covenant transport were done. She was going to die here. So be it.
An Elite charged at her, energy sword crackling in the fading light, and she twisted to the side, letting it stumble past her, before reaching up, grabbing its head and twisting. Despite her injuries, despite her exhaustion, her strength was still good, and the aliens neck snapped as its head was twisted around almost a hundred and eighty degrees.
She fell back again, limping now, pulling her Spartan laser from her back and spending the last of its power cell on a shot through a Phantoms cockpit. The transport crashed to the ground and flipped, and she threw the now useless weapon away, firing her pistol again.
The end was in sight now, she knew that, but she kept fighting. Twelve more grunts, three Jackals and seven Elites died before a bone breaking hits of a concussion rifle threw her across the ground, destroying her overtaxed shields and destroying her visor completely.
Jane pulled herself to her knees and reached up, pulling her helmet off and throwing it aside. Plasma fire from an Elite ahead of her caught her attention and she looked to see the alien closing in, and an MA37 on the ground ahead of her. Stumbling forward, she grabbed the weapon and opened fire, chewing through its shields and then its head. Around her, she could hear the angry snarl of the aliens, their language still as strange as ever, but as the smaller aliens fell back, she understood the order. The Elites knew it was time to kill the demon, and only they would get that honor.
She never realized that her helmets camera could see her last stand, was recording her as an Elite moved in behind her, growling and readying its energy blade. She heard it coming and spun, slamming her rifle into its face and making it fall backwards, then drew her sidearm and shot it twice in the head. Plasma fire to her left drew her attention and she turned, firing into another Elite, dropping its shields, before yet another elite fired on her. Screaming her defiance now, Jane turned her rifle onto that target, aiming her pistol at the first Elite and killing it with a series of quick shots. The second Elite died as her rifle ran out of ammunition, and then another, an Ultra, charged her.
Grabbing her chestplate, it threw her back onto the ground, then lunged at her, sword raised in a killing blow. Her foot caught him in the stomach, stopping the lunge and throwing it back, even as one more Elite, this one a Zealot, charged in. Her pistol fired one last time before locking open, knocking the sword from its hand and making the beast stumble. The lunging Elite came back, slamming a hoof on her injured chest, and she screamed in pain and anger, pulling her combat knife from its sheath and stabbing it into her enemies thigh. It fell back with a scream, and then that last Elite came in again, holding a smaller energy knife in its hand and snarling...
And then there was nothing.
***
July 7, 2589
“The beacon’s three hundred meters this way,” the naval officer said, walking across the grass covered field.
“What was this place?” one of the marines wondered, glancing at the occasional fragment of rusting metal emerging from the dirt.
“According to the files, there was a navy shipyard not far from here, back before the Covenant glassed the place,” the Commander replied. He shook his head. “Not that you’d know, looking at it now.”
“It’s weird,” another marine said. “My dad told me stories about this world. About what happened here. But right here, right now, you can’t really tell.”
“I guess this planet’s more durable then one might expect,” the Commander said, then pointed. “There’s the signal.” He stepped forward and knelt down, picking up a battered helmet. “UNSC helmet... I think it’s a Spartan helmet,” he added, his voice slightly awed.
“I think you might be right sir.” The man looked over to see a marine kneeling down over a half-buried form, almost hidden in the grass. “Female, looks like modified Mark Five armor,” she reported.
“More bodies over here,” another marine called out. “Mostly rotted, but the armor and skeletons, I’d say Grunts and Jackals, lots of them.”
“No Brutes or Elites?” someone wondered.
“The Elites would have recovered their dead,” the Commander said. “They’d have left the lower ranked bodies here.” He plugged a datapad into the helmets external port, and nodded in satisfaction as the old helmets hard drive responded to the power source. “Got an id. Jane-B312, Noble Team. She’s a Spartan-Three. There’s a lot of footage in this thing. Combat recordings. Buck, call the ship, let them know we’re going to need a full recovery team. We’ve got fallen soldiers here to recover.”
“On it sir,” the woman replied. The Commander looked at the helmet, then at the body of the fallen Spartan. Protocol was clear on what to do with her. She was to be taken back to Earth and buried with full honors at the Spartan Memorial Cemetary, outside the Ark.
She’d earned so much more then that, but the UNSC would do what it could to honor her sacrifice.
***
"It didn't take long for Reach to fall. Our enemy was ruthless. Efficient. But they weren't nearly fast enough. For you had already passed the torch. And because of you, we found Halo, unlocked its secrets, shattered our enemy's resolve. Our victory - your victory - was so close... I wish you could have lived to see it. But you belong to Reach. Your body, your armor - all burned and turned to glass. Everything, except your courage. That, you gave to us. And with it, we can rebuild."
