| abstract | - The Spartan worked his jaw, activating his helmet’s acknowledgement signal. Three more lights winked on in the corner of his HUD, one for each of the three other Spartans responding to their team leader’s warning. At the head of their loose formation, Jake-G293 brought his MA5K carbine to bear and quickened his stride. Simon and the others did the same, keeping up with Jake as the first of the Covenant Grunts waddled into view. The squat alien soldiers scanned the corridor with an assortment of plasma weapons and needle rifles. Their leader, a stout veteran in a red combat harness, passed his plasma rifle directly in front of Simon’s chest. Simon's breath caught in his throat. He saw the alien’s beady eyes boring into him, felt years of training kick in as he instinctively went for the trigger. But the Grunt didn’t so much as blink. It lowered the weapon and waved his squad forward. The SPARTAN-IIIs of Team Jian stood absolutely still, trusting in the camouflage functions of their Semi-Powered Infiltration armor to blend them in with the corridor’s grey walls and dark shadows. More and more Grunts emerged from around the corner, pushing and jostling each other in the tight corridor as they advanced towards Team Jian’s position. Simon did a quick headcount and hoped his pounding heart wasn’t betraying his anxiety to the rest of the team. There were fifteen Grunts in total, three for every one of the Spartans in Jian. A red light flashed on Simon’s HUD, marking a Grunt just to the left of the leader. Jake was designating initial targets for the rest of the team. Simon hastily shifted his aim, training his MA5K on the target’s bobbing head and taking a deep breath. The Grunts drew nearer, coming within ten feet of the halted Jian, then five. Jake’s red warning light flashed three times. Simon jammed the trigger down. His first shots went wide, striking his Grunt in the shoulder. The alien yelped in surprise and stumbled, blue blood spilling out over its pebbly grey skin. Its uninjured arm came up, desperately seeking a target. Simon gritted his teeth and jerked his carbine to the right, trying to get a new bead on the Grunt’s head. He fired again, and this time his shot flew home. The alien’s head popped like a deflating balloon and it keeled over in front of its squealing comrades. All around Simon, the rest of Team Jian laid into their targets with quick, tight efficiency. The suppressed MA5Ks let out soft thuds as Grunt after Grunt collapsed. Once the initial targets were taken care of, the Spartans picked off the rest of the Grunts at will. The confused aliens didn’t even have the chance to scream out as they were cut down. Simon sighted up on the nearest one’s chest and pumped a trio of bullets into it, knocking the Grunt back into another one of his fellows. They struggled together for a moment before a shot from the Spartan at Simon’s left—Ralph-G299—finished them both off. Five seconds after the shooting had started all fifteen Grunts lay dead in the corridor. Jake flashed a green light over the HUD, and Jian was on the move again, picking its way through the bodies and pressing deeper into the facility. The Grunts had been Jian’s third point of hard contact since the mission had begun and the Spartans had annihilated them with the same covert thoroughness that they had brought to bear against the other Covenant patrols. This was what they’d spent all those years on Onyx’s playgrounds and exercise zones training to do: engage and destroy the Covenant and complete the mission no matter what the odds. Failure, as their drill instructors had screamed at them during obstacle courses and live-fire exercises, was never an option. Team Jian had been tasked with infiltrating the lower levels of Atlas Communication’s Ijkali headquarters and making sure that an employee’s failure to wipe the building’s backup computer drives didn’t turn into a disaster on par with the loss of Reach. If the Covenant warriors picking through these basements got their hands on those drives, humanity could kiss its chances for survival good-bye. The Covenant would know the location of Earth and every remaining colony world; from there, the alien juggernaut could glass the planets at its leisure. Ijkali was falling, and every regular military asset in the area was busy defending civilian evacuations and delaying the Covenant armies now sweeping across the planet. The Atlas building was already behind enemy lines, unreachable even by ODST special forces. The UNSC could have leveled the building with a few well-placed missile strikes, but there was too much of a chance that the isolated underground computers would survive the collapse. HIGHCOM had no feasible way of making sure the data didn’t fall into Covenant hands. So they’d sent in Spartans. Simon moved down the corridor, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible. SPI armor was light stuff. To the average listener, Team Jian’s combined footfalls sounded like nothing more than stray wind bouncing around the metal walls. The longer they stayed undetected, the less resistance they’d face as they advanced on the computer safehouse. Jake’s voice crackled over the TEAMCOM in a rare breach of radio silence. “Simon,” Team Jian’s squad leader said with exaggerated patience. “Keep in formation.” Simon started and glanced at the beacons on his motion tracker that denoted his four cloaked teammates. He’d drifted out of their loose wedge pattern and into Terrence’s lane of movement at the back of the formation. Biting back a mortified apology, he corrected his angle and kept moving. No one said anything over the TEAMCOM, but Simon could practically hear their eyes rolling at what was just the latest in an endless string of gaffs and missteps that had plagued him since training and into their deployment. No one would say anything now, but he knew that he’d catch hell for it once the mission was over and they were out in the field. There was nothing to be done but focus on the present and not let it happen again. Simon shook his head and tapped a finger against the side of his MA5K. Now wasn’t the time to beat himself over the head about mistakes. They had a mission to complete here. They moved further down the corridor, a shimmering distortion of light hidden by the shadows. The reflective panels on their SPI armor blended in seamlessly with the surrounding walls and disguised their advance from any watching eyes in the darkness ahead. Jake flashed the warning light again. This time he broke radio silence as the team froze in place. “Two Jackals,” he said over the TEAMCOM. “In the doorway ahead. Get ‘em from behind.” Simon lowered his carbine and reached for the combat knife strapped to his shoulder. He was just to the right of Jake at the head of the formation. According to Jian’s SOPs, he’d move up and take out the rightmost guard while Terrence covered him from behind. Now was the chance to make up for his earlier misstep. The TEAMCOM crackled again. “Hold up, Simon,” he ordered. “Cover Terrence while he gets in close.” Simon didn’t hesitate; he’d been trained to adapt immediately when procedure needed to be bypassed—which it often did. He brought the MA5K back up and took a knee as Terrence slipped past him, a creeping ripple along the wall’s smooth surface. Inside though, he was fuming. He’d fallen out of step once, and that was enough for Jake to stand him up in front of the whole team? It wasn’t about that, he knew. Jake didn’t want to compromise the mission by taking the risk that the lowest-rated combatant in Gamma Company might find a way to screw up and blow their cover. It was a calculated decision, nothing more. That didn’t make it sting any less. Terrence took the Jackal in a single motion, the panels on his armor flickering as his arm lashed out and buried his combat knife in the avian alien’s neck. Beside him, Ralph jerked his own Jackal’s head back and slashed its throat. The aliens collapsed, their forearm force shields winking out. Ralph and Terrence appropriated the shields and moved back into formation. As he passed Simon, Terrence passed him the arm shield; a silent show of good faith, the equivalent of a frown and a shrug. At least Jian’s marksman didn’t resent being forced to pick up Simon’s job along with his own. Jake signaled them forward again and they advanced, passing through the door the Jackals had been guarding and stepping out onto a large catwalk overlooking what looked to Simon like some sort of warehouse. Large crates were stacked in rows across the room. He recognized it immediately from the mission briefing. This was the chamber just before the database safe room. Jake flashed a warning light. “Watch your fire. Team Kopis is moving in from the right.” Simon turned to see five more SPARTAN-IIIs emerge from the other side of the catwalk, their reflective panels fading back to their usual dull green color. Team Kopis was the second team assigned to this mission; they’d breached the building from a different point as a precaution against beefed-up enemy patrols. Simon’s HUD hummed and updated to include Kopis’s status icons alongside those of his teammates. One of the newcomers stepped forward. Simon’s HUD identified him as Vincent, Kopis’s team leader. “Took your sweet time getting here, Jian,” he said, swiping his fingers over his faceplate in the “smile” greeting that every Spartan knew and loved. “We were just about to assault the objective without you.” “We had to stop a couple times for a frank discussion with some Covies,” Jake replied, returning the greeting. “They’ve got some really interesting things to say if you just take the time to get to know them.” Vincent laughed and waved Jian forward to the edge of the catwalk. All ten Spartans went prone, their reflective panels becoming grey to match the metal. Everything was quiet in the room below as they scanned it with their carbines. “We haven’t picked up anything on trackers,” Vincent explained. “Nothing on thermals, either. If there’s any Covenant down there, they’ll be in the safe room.” “What about active camo?” Jake asked. “Wouldn’t want to drop down into a room full of hinge-heads.” “Camo shows up on thermal,” Vincent reminded him. “And you won’t be dropping in anyway,, remember? We’re assault, you’re support.” “Don’t remind me,” Ralph muttered over Jian’s private com channel. “Well, have fun down there,” Jake said. “We’ll cover you from up here.” “Got it.” Vincent rose to a crouch and the rest of Kopis followed suit. “Just make sure Simon doesn’t have an accidental discharge and shoot one of us in the back. Give Cassandra a day off, would you?” “Just get going,” Jake laughed, raising a camouflaged hand to smack Vincent on the back of an armored leg. “We’ve got your back.” Simon swept his rifle over the empty room, trying not to take it personally that Jake had clearly swapped stories about him with Vincent. It wasn’t as if he made a habit of accidental discharges. They just happened to him more than they did to most other people. He kept his mouth shut, though. Jake and the others had been good to him, putting up with him even when his low scores dragged the rest of the team down. If the price he paid for their friendship was a little ribbing here and there, so be it. Vincent waved his team forward. Nathan went first, dropping from the catwalk to land on the floor a good twenty feet below. His hardened bones and armor absorbed the force of the impact and in the next second he had recovered and was moving to cover the rest of his descending team. Ben and Alex went next, followed swiftly by Cassandra. She adjusted the medical kit strapped to her armor’s combat webbing, pressing it against her thigh to keep the contents safe from the impact. Simon couldn’t help but be envious of her. The mediocrity of her combat scores rivaled his own, yet she’d found a way out of it by becoming the best field medic in the company. It was only a few months since they’d graduated and seen their first field deployments, but already she’d saved dozens of Spartans from life threatening wounds. Nobody would ever dare make fun of her. Vincent was the last to go, vanishing over the edge with a casual wave to Jian. He formed up with his squad and they moved out, taking an L-shaped path to hug the far edge of the room. Jake reduced his camouflage and raised an arm, moving down the line and assigning zones of fire to everyone in Jian. Simon eyed his own sector, seeing nothing amidst the crates and shadows. Kopis continued to advance, keeping a tight formation and scanning the area with their carbines. At the rate they were going, they’d reach the safe room in no time. Mary’s status indicator flared red. “Contact,” she hissed over the TEAMCOM. “Coming into the room, far side. I’ve got two hinge-heads heading up a mixed bag, looks like five Jackals and ten Grunts.” “Yeah, I see them.” Jake highlighted the area for the rest of the team to see. Shapes moved inside the shadows as the Covenant warriors began to fan out around the crates. “Let’s get their attention before they run into Kopis. Stay cool, Simon.” Simon flushed inside his helmet, only just realizing that his heart rate had spiked at Mary’s warning indicator. He adjusted his aim and sighted down on the foremost cluster of Grunts, trying to steady his breathing as Jake sent out a warning to Vincent. Kopis’s acknowledgment lights winked on and they continued their advance. Jake flashed the warning light three times and Jian opened fire. Simon fired in controlled bursts, pleased to see two of his targets go down within seconds of each other. The aliens snarled and hooted, caught off guard by the bullets that tore through their formation. One of the tall Elite warriors bellowed a command as he realized what direction the shots were coming from and tried to conduct his subordinates’ fire. He died seconds later as his energy shields collapsed under the weight of a torrent of bullets and a final burst neatly removed his head from his body. The surviving Elite waved his troops into cover. Simon ejected his spent clip and reloaded as Jake flashed the red light four times, the signal to lift fire. Kopis moved in from the side, vanishing behind the same crates as the Covenant. The room fell silent for a moment before the air was split with the cries of panicked alien soldiers. The yelling stopped moments later and Vincent flashed his acknowledgement light. “That’s the last of ‘em. Thanks for the cover, Jian.” Kopis advanced up the center now, only detectable by the indicator lights on Simon’s HUD. They reached the door to the safe room and took up cover positions around it while Ben punched in the door codes they’d been given by terrified Atlas officials. The door slid open and Vincent flashed up an acknowledgement light before he and his team ducked inside. Alex lingered by the door, covering the only way in or out of the safe room. “Alright,” Vincent said over the TEAMCOM. “Got a visual on the data core now. Ben just has to fry the drives and we’ll be on our way home.” “Well hurry it up so we can get out of here.” “On it. Just sit tight.” Simon adjusted his position, carefully scanning the room for any Covenant stragglers. If they were lucky, the group they’d just killed didn’t have anyone following up to help them secure the room. Yes, that would be the lucky thing, but no Spartan ever relied on luck. Simon in particular never trusted in luck. The day he started being lucky would be the day everyone found a better butt for their jokes. There was still nothing. With a sigh, he cocked his helmet to one side and rested his carbine down against the catwalk. The room’s darkness and silence managed to be both dull and menacing at the same time. On a whim, he adjusted the settings on his visor’s infrared view, passing his gaze over row after row of crates as he turned up the frequency. A bit higher, then a bit lower. Higher, lower, higher, lower… Something flickered just beside the safe room. Simon froze, focusing on that one spot. The air shimmered slightly, as if he were looking at the patch of wall there through a glass of water. A bit like the way SPI’s camo looked, only… not. Simon flashed his warning indicator. “I’ve got something,” he hissed at the others. “Right by the safe room. Switch to infrared, highest setting!” “Holy shit,” Mary breathed. “You’re right. I think we’ve got Elites. Active camo. Damn it, how’d we miss that?” Jake didn’t waste another second. He flared the warning indicators for the whole team, a general, critical alert. “Kopis, watch the entrance, now! We’ve got movement, possible stealth Elites!” “What?” Vincent demanded. “Nathan, get back! Alex, look out!” The point where Simon’s HUD said the camouflaged Alex was standing jerked to the side, but it was too late. The shimmer he’d seen darted forward and was joined by two more shimmers that broke away from the crates they’d been hiding beside. The first shimmer collided with Alex’s identifier and kept going. Blue light flared from within the safe room. Simon’s helmet sensors picked up the telltale sound of plasma fire. “Nathan, shut that Elite down!” Vincent barked over the TEAMCOM. “Ben, get the data wiped! Cassandra, on me—“ His voice was suddenly cut off, replaced by a burst of static. The plasma fire grew louder, joined by the heavy pounding of an unsilenced M6 service pistol. “Vincent, come in!” Jake yelled, rising to his knees. “Jian, we’re moving in! Terrence, hold here and watch for more of them. Everyone else, get down there!” Simon scrambled upright along with the rest of his team. He glanced down at the warehouse floor and shivered in spite of himself. It was a long way down. The plasma fire intensified. On the HUD, Alex’s signal turned blood red, then winked out. The rest of the team was already on the ground and moving. Simon’s training kicked in and he forced himself out into the air. The ground rushed up to meet him and then he was crashing down in an unsteady crash. He felt the force of the impact rush all the way up his legs, through his bones, and into his teeth. There was no time to shake it off. He dashed forward, moving through the crates as fast as he could go. His heart pounded as he neared the safe room, weapon at the ready. The plasma fire continued to blaze, and now that he was closer he could hear the sound of Kopis’s silenced MA5Ks mixed in beneath it. He had just rounded the corner of the last crate and was headed for the safe room when something big and powerful cannoned into him. He slammed to the floor, his rifle skidding away into the shadows. He struggled to get up, only for a hand to clamp down on his shoulder like a vice. Simon looked up and found himself visor-to-mandibles with a snarling Elite. The warrior snarled, its four mandibles extending in a terrible maw as it activated the energy dagger on its wrist. A short blade of light convalesced above its hand and struck down at Simon’s throat. With a yell, Simon jerked himself hard to the side, throwing the Elite off-balance and sending the dagger down into the ground a hair’s breadth from his neck. Simon forced his way up, fighting against the Elite’s hold every inch of the way. He punched the Elite with his free hand, hammering at its shields while trying to jerk his shoulder free. Somehow in his panic he remembered what Petty Officer Tom-B292 had taught him about a brawl like this. Don’t wait to get the pointy bits into play. They’ll beat you strength versus strength every time. Simon reached over and pried the Elite’s fingers off his shoulder until he could reach the hilt of his knife. Stupid to have it in a place so easy to get pinned like that, stupid, stupid. He’d bring more than one next time. He wrenched the knife free from its sheath and slashed it across the Elite’s arching neck. The first cut overloaded the shields. The next slit its throat. The Elite coughed and gagged, spitting purple blood out onto Simon’s visor. It brought the plasma dagger up for a desperate swing, then jerked and toppled over. A few feet away, Mary lowered her MA5K and waved him on. Simon shoved the Elite’s corpse over and got to his feet. His body was numb with terror, but he’d been trained and augmented to overcome every obstacle—mental and physical—his body could come up with. He scooped up his own carbine and rushed towards the safe room entrance. It was only when he reached the door that he realized that Vincent and Ben’s indicators had vanished. He burst into the room alongside Mary just as Ralph tackled one of three maroon-armored Elites who now occupied the small enclosure. The hinge-head snarled and collapsed under the Spartan’s barrage of punches, lashing out instinctively with its feet as it fell. The alien’s two-toed foot kicked something over into Simon’s leg. It was Vincent’s head. Simon forced himself to look away from that dead, eternal stare and glanced around the rest of the room. Jake was struggling with another Elite while a Spartan that the HUD identified as Cassandra fired up at yet another with her pistol while trying to keep pressure on a gaping wound in Nathan’s chest. Three other Elites were scattered across the floor, already dead. Mingled amongst the alien corpses were three human figures clad in SPI armor. One was missing its head. Snapping his MA5K up, Simon fired at the back of the Elite closing in on Cassandra. Rage coursed through him, anger at these murdering split-faced bastards for killing Spartans, his brothers. At that moment, he wanted nothing in the world more than to see these freaks dead on the floor with the others. He emptied his clip into the Elite’s back, draining the creature’s shields. The warrior spun, raising its glowing energy sword. Then its head vanished in a grey and purple mist as Cassandra blew its head off. Kopis’s medic lowered her pistol and turned her full attention to Nathan, faceless behind her visor. Blood oozed from his wound, a vicious slash through his shoulder and down into his chest. Down on the floor, Ralph plunged his knife into his opponent’s throat with a primal yell of triumph. Mary had darted forward and emptied her clip into the last warrior’s back, nearly blowing it in half. Simon lowered his carbine and fumbled to reload it. The anger from a moment ago was already ebbing away, replaced with a dull sense of horror as he looked over the three bodies from Kopis. The Elite ambush had turned a cakewalk mission into a slaughter in less than a minute. It wasn’t the first time Simon had seen fellow Spartans die, but it had never been like this. Nathan gasped and struggled against Cassandra’s tight grip. Simon’s gut twisted as he realized that Cassandra was quite literally holding the life of her last remaining teammate in her hands. And from the looks of things, that life wouldn’t last much longer. Jake approached Cassandra while Mary and Ralph took stock of the bodies. “The data files,” he said carefully. “Did you get them?” “I don’t know,” she said tightly, not looking up. “They’re gone.” She could have been talking about the files or she could have been referring to Kopis. Simon had a good idea what the answer to that mystery was. Ralph approached a computer bank and checked it over. “Clean,” he reported. “They wiped the data.” “Right.” Jake glanced back and motioned for Simon to help Cassandra get Nathan on his feet. “Then we need to go, before more of them show up. Get it together people, we’re leaving!” Simon hurried over to Cassandra and reached down to sling one of Nathan’s arms over his shoulder. The Spartan medic shifted her gaze to look up at him. Her blank visor betrayed nothing, but it didn’t need to. Her voice told him everything. “Don’t move him,” she said with brittle fervor, as if the slightest push might send her flying over the edge. “I need to stabilize him. He’s all that’s left.” “We can’t stay,” Simon urged her in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. It was hard to communicate through the armor with people outside your own squad. “We’ve gotta go. Jake says.” He was still covered in blood from the Elite he’d stabbed, and as Cassandra helped him get Nathan up the red blood from the Spartan’s wound mixed with the purple to form a grotesque painting across his chest. It was a mixture he’d remember for the rest of his life. And he would never forget how the safe room looked as they left, littered with the corpses of Spartans and Elites alike. Cassandra stayed by Nathan’s side all through the trip to the waiting Pelican dropship and during the hours it took to slip away from the Covenant air patrols. She didn’t say a word, just kept up the treatment on the floor of the troop bay. She didn’t stop, even when Nathan’s eyes slipped close and his breathing ground to a halt. Once they’d landed in the destroyer waiting to take them off-world, it took three different pronouncements from three different medical technicians to convince her that he was dead. As she walked away from the body, she slugged the last one in the gut and was consigned to the brig for two days. The teams had successfully wiped the data, preventing a catastrophic breach of the Cole Protocol in the face of overwhelming odds. The mission was declared a complete and outstanding success.
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