An Operator Named "Sierra" (Halo AU/Arknights Crossover)

[FastConcentrate8]

6 Dec. 2555
2048 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Training Room

"Alex?" The mysterious figure that Mroz was holding at gunpoint in an armlock asked him as he still took in the shock of the sight of a full suit of MJOLNIR Mk. IV in a very familiar color scheme. Most surprisingly was the voice itself which sounded unsettlingly like an MIA Spartan he knew.

Then came the second shock. "Dad!?"

The security teams parted from the source of the voice to make way for a Lupo woman standing dumbstruck with a flashlight in one hand held next to her head and a.... was that an energy sword... held in her other hand. She was standing stock still with her mouth held slightly ajar and her eyes wide with disbelief. He recognized her after a second, Texas, that girl who was one of Sneg's new friends.

Grabbing both of the man's hands and slowly rising to his feet, Mroz pulled the man up as well and kept him restrained before allowing Sneg to come up with some high strength metallic alloy cable used for climbing and tie his hands up as a makeshift handcuff due to him being easily able to escape normally. He then turned the figure around and was shocked when he saw the markings on the front of the armor and almost confirmed who it was.

On the upper left of the armor's chest plate was a titanium white UNSC Eagle and Globe emblem. On the upper right was a small emblem of an ancient Spartan helmet with silver inlays denoting team. On the lower left was a small rank insignia denoting a Chief Petty Officer. However, it was the lower left that he was least prepared for. A three digit identification number in titanium white block characters. One he hadn't seen in a very very long time and though lost forever. 150.

"Clyde..." Alex slowly asked as he reached for the man's helmet as it nodded. He reached for the location of Mk. IV's release system on cruse control and heard the hiss of the armor's hermetic seal being broken. He slowly lifted the helmet off and braced himself for what he was about to see. It was the same face of one of the original three he was introduced to on Reach on day 1. Same rugged jaw, same wide and friendly smile, same hard nose, same kind eyes, broad forehead, and same red short cropped red hair. Well, mostly. He had a few more scars though not that many. His face was a bit more worn and looked a few decades past his own and his hair was beginning to grey on the sides and edges with salt and pepper colors mixed into his normal rust red. Still, it was a face he would never have been able to forget or fail to recognize. He also had a black left eye, most likely from their fight and a bruise on his cheek.

"Good to see you too Alex." He managed to get out as he continued to stare at the man opposite to him. Alex reached for his own helmet and released it as well. He lifted it off his own and looked at his old teammate in the eye. Clyde was surprised to see the same too. Alex didn't look much older than he was when... the raid on Basilisk Base. He looked about 20 years younger than himself and he still had that scar over his eye. "I thought you were gone, never guessed I would see you here."

It was then though that several security personnel came up and took him and Texas chased after him a bit continuing to try to get his attention by repeatedly shouting Dad. Clyde noticed this though and turned his head to face her only to say one thing, "Hey Abbigail, don't worry about this, I'll handle it." Before he was continued to be dragged out by security leaving everyone confused.

Eventually, people began to file out of the room and return to their normal activities though some still remained confused as to what just happened. Two of which being long time partners and friends, Operators Texas and Exusiai.

Exusiai looked at her partner and asked her, "You're name's Abbigail."

The Lupo sighed, "Yes. My full name is Abbigail Walker Texas."

"Wait, your last name is Texas and your middle name is Walker?"
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Dallas or Clyde-150 as Alex knew him as was sitting in the Ship Security's holding cell after they had deactivated his armor due to not being able to take it off.

Across the table from him and behind what he estimated to be about 3 inches of bulletproof glass were two very familiar figures. One of which was a green haired Feline who he swore never aged and a very nebulous figure that he had worked with in the past and was shocked when he didn't remember him.

Sighing, Dr. Kal'tsit shot him an angry glare. "Dallas, we've known for years that you were a loose cannon who is extremely reckless, but this is fucking ridiculous." She broke her normally calm attitude when she swore at him before returning to it, "You do know that you could have just walked into our front desk and requested a visit with Texas, or asked about our new personnel, or done something other than break into our primary base of operations with a plan to sneak past our defenses and steal potentially valuable information that you could gain from far less dangerous means."

"Kal, you still don't mind that I call you that..." She sighed but didn't say no, "My plan was to go in unnoticed without kicking anything off. I was never intending to hurt anyone and I just wanted to check things out myself." He put his hands up, "I wasn't going to do any harm and I was only here to satisfy my own curiosity." He used all of his body language and tone to try to convince them that he was sincere which he was.

Kal'tsit sighed again, looked down and then at the Doctor who shrugged. She then looked back at Dallas and grimaced before shifting back to her normal face, "Well Dallas, since we owe you so much and the fact that if we do anything to you we risk most of the PMCs on Terra laying siege to the landship and half of all countries declaring war on us due to your quite frankly vast network of connection to high profile figures in both the private sector and various governments. Consider yourself lucky with that."

Dallas leaned forward in his seat at that, "Kal, I've known you long enough to know that this is about time for you to say 'But'."

She nodded at that, "You would be correct. While we are, against my opinion, withholding you from major repercussions for your rash actions, you do still have a punishment. Your intrusion into the Landship has caused damage to the ship, lead to several minor injuries among our staff, and caused more damage in Mroz's attempt to apprehend you. You'll have to pay us for those and more to cover all of the damages you caused. Know that there will probably be legal repercussions later down the line." She ended on a harsh note as she got up and left the room.

The Doctor however, decided to stay behind for a bit. "You know Dallas, I have an offer for you to repay that alternatively and dodge those lawsuits Kal'tsit was threatening you with. You did say that you wanted to see and spend some time with your daughter who is one of our Operators so..." He slid a paper and pen through the small slot in the bullet proof glass, "I'll give you time to think about it. I know Kal'tsit will hate me for this, but she already does."

The masked man then stood up and walked out as well, leaving Dallas alone in the room. "I guess some things never change." He said to himself as he reclined in the chair and looked up at the camera in the ceiling. However, he was interrupted when he heard the door open again and a familiar suit of powered armor walked in.

"Alex, still great to see you. I see you still got that scar from Sanghelios." Clyde said with genuine joy and thankfulness to see the brother to him who he thought lost back in front of him.

"Clyde,..." The other Spartan began as he took his helmet off, placing it on the table, and sitting down. "What you did was idiotic, reckless, dumb, filled with far too many risks and..." He struggled to find a word, "Very... you." He said as he made eye contact with the man on the other side of the glass. Sighing slightly.

Clyde chuckled at that, "You're starting to sound like Chief Mendez or John, Alex."

Alex softly laughed at that, "Yeah, I guess I am. So how've you been doing here? You've been MIA for a while. Also..." Alex reached into one of his hardcases and pulled out four objects, a butane lighter, a cigar cutter, and two cigars. He clipped the caps off of both cigars before sliding one through the slot, lighting his, and sliding the lighter through the slot as well which Clyde accepted before returning it through the slot to Alex, "They pulled those off of you in Security. I had my partner 'liberate' them so I could return them. I'm taking this one as a finder's fee."

"Ehh..." Clyde shrugged, "That's fare. Oh boy where to start...." Both parties made themselves comfortable for what was going to be a long conversation.

"Alright,..." Clyde began his story, "What year is it back home? I want to make sure that time has been normal." Alex answered with a simple statement of 2555. "Alright so still about 24 years so yep, normal time flow." He looked up in thought before taking a drag off of his cigar.

"So, as you probably know, SILVER was on a deep space pursuit mission of some Covenant Pirates." He looked back down to make eye contact again with Alex, "After you were... gone... we were assigned to a new Prowler and given a fireteam of ODSTs to replace you."

Alex laughed again, "I presume to unsatisfactory results as a replacement."

Clyde smiled, "Yeah, something like that. Anyway, our Prowler just managed to catch their old carrier after one of their Litches was returning to the mothership from a raid. We were going to board them when they began a Slip Space jump so our Captain decided to follow them through the jump so we did. It was just that they somehow managed to detect us as we shadowed them in Slip Space and hit us with a grazing hit from a Plasma Torpedo. Blew the bridge clean off and knocked us into some sort of Slip Space anomaly. We reappeared in Real Space in the upper atmosphere of an unknown planet and needed to abandon ship since we had no control due to a lack of a bridge. All of the crew put on M-Spec Reentry packs and bailed from the craft as it descended. We mostly all jumped, but our trajectory Scattered us over a significant chunk of the planet with limited communications. As I descended, I made a bit of a vow to track down and recover as many UNSC personnel as possible."

Alex blew some smoke out of his mouth from his cigar, "So, when you heard that Rhodes Island hired two new Operators, both wearing the Eagle and Globe as an emblem, you came to investigate thinking we were survivors from the Prowler?"

Clyde answered him simple, "Yep."

Alex leaned forward again, putting his elbows on the table, "Still, that doesn't explain why Texas called you Dad. Is she your daughter?"

Clyde smiled at that, "I'm getting there, and about that partner of yours. I didn't recognize her or her number, did they go through with Class II or maybe III or is she something else?"

Alex breathed in and then out sharply before taking another drag off his cigar, trying to figure out how to answer that one, "I'll let you finish first. First though, a quick question. Did you ever find Jin?"

Clyde reclined again while doing a bit of maintenance on the cherry of his cigar, "No, never found her. No clue where she is or what she's been doing. Last I saw her was on the Prowler. Anyway, me and the ODSTs managed to land within a mile of each other in this place here called Kazdel. It was in the middle of a very nasty Civil War and soon me and the fireteam found ourselves defending a refugee camp from a massive group of Rebel Forces along side a bunch of Operators of Rhodes Island's predecessor Babble. To a normal 6 man combat group from here, there was no way that we would have been able to fight those forces off. However, one Spartan and 5 ODSTs isn't exactly a normal combat group from here so we beat them back with little trouble. Afterwards, we were questioned by the Babble Operators about who we were and it was then that Sergeant Michaels, leader of the ODSTs, got and idea for a cover story. We passed ourselves off as Mercenaries entering the country, looking for work and an employer. We needed recon and resources here so it was the perfect story for us to get both. After having seen our capabilities in combat, Babble instantly offered us an absurdly good contract to help them protect their refugee and medical camps. We took it up and were with them for a couple months."

"You..." Alex pointed with his cigar, "Becoming a Mercenary alongside a bunch of ODSTs." He looked around the room only barely suppressing his laughter, "That's the most Clyde thing I've ever heard from you Clyde."

Clyde looked at him, "Did you just use my name as an adjective?"

Alex nodded, "Yep, we started using your name as an adjective for batshit crazy things that we've heard Spartans doing. Guess I should have told you."

"Ahhh." Clyde waved that off. "So anyway, we did spend a lot of time with other Babble hired mercenaries during the War and we even tracked down a few Prowler survivors while in Kazdel. While we were also in country, we were in one of the less destroyed parts of the country and decided to head into town when we had leave for a few days. That was when I meet her."

Exhaling more smoke, "Who's her?" Alex asked.

Clyde took another drag off of his own cigar as well, "My late wife."

"YOU WERE MARRIED?"
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AN: So I just wanted to say where I got my OCs from. SILVER Team and Irina are all characters from me and my friends from the unofficial Halo RPG Halo Mythic.

SILVER team were from one of our early games where we were playing as a Spartan team sent to intervene in the Sangheili Civil War on Sanghelios as part of the larger Sanghelios Campaign of the UNSC.

Irina was my character in a Spartan III Headhunter game set in the same universe a decade later when some of the remaining Prophets organized their remaining followers into a crusade against the UEG and the Swords of Sanghelios's Federation of Keeps.

I chose to make Clyde Texas's father due to his player being the friend who introduced me to Arknights and having a massive Protecc instinct for Texas as a character. He thought it was hilarious and fitting given who Clyde was so approved it.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

11 Jun. 1074 (2532 UEG Calendar)
2201 Hours
Kazdel

Spartan Clyde-150 sat hunched over his drink in a dingy bar in a mostly untouched city in the middle of a warzone.

This had always been a hard day for him since the Operation on Horizon. This would have been Alex's birthday, but it was also the anniversary of his death. He was still haunted by the memory of seeing his oldest friend trying to claw his way out of the chamber as nerve gas used the breaches in his armor to slowly kill him.

He looked down at the tacpad and frowned as he saw the image. It was the last picture he had of all of SILVER together before Alex died and Jin went MIA when they arrived here. He would miss them and he was going to hope that he could at least find at least Jin since she had been on the Prowler and bailed after him.

That itself was another strange thing, for about a month and a half now him and the ODSTs of Echo-8 have been stranded on a previously unknown planet that was inhabited by some of the strangest people he had ever seen. He lacked words to describe it, but it was like they were something else spliced with human which was evident in their appearance. They almost universally had an inhuman aspect to their appearance which was normally some type and animalistic horns, ears, or tails though the inhabitants of this country held more in common with the traditional appearance of demons than any animals he knew besides maybe those weird goliaths from back on Reach. Nice enough people, but all of this was just strange to him and to Echo-8.

In the mean time, due to their lack of information, resources, support, and needing a plausible cover story, they had claimed that they were PMCs moving into Kazdel looking for work. Luckily, the first group they came across, a humanitarian group called Babel, had seen them in combat where the 6 of them managed to turn back a force of nearly a thousand hostiles. It wasn't particularly hard due to them having the firepower and experience advantage over what was essentially an unorganized mob of attackers with melee weapons. However, it was still impressive both for the team and the Babel guys so they were hired to run security for refugee and medical camps scattered around the country. At least it was something they had experience doing in the past.

However, being the only UNSC personnel they knew of on planet was something that weighed on their morale and psyches. Because of that, their immediate superior had given them leave in one of the more untouched cities in Kazdel and some recommendations for a place to take a load off. Unfortunately, their superior, a local working for Babel named Scout, didn't know about Clyde's long history with the date June 11th. Clyde put a finger to the screen and took a closer look at the faces of his two lost teammates before downing some more of his drink as a slight toast to those lost. The ODSTs were outside socializing with some of the other Babel PMCs, apparently this place was popular among contractors for the Loyalist side of this Civil War, leaving him alone standing at the bar.

As he was standing there though, he failed to notice that someone came up to the bar next to him until she accidentally bumped into him. While Clyde was more socialized than the average Spartan II, he still had a lot of the usual social anxieties common to his brothers and sisters in arms including an aversion to direct physical contact with others. The feeling of the bump caused him to go onto alert for a brief moment and almost subconsciously reach for the bowie knife on his belt. He opted against wearing his armor here but brought one of his M6Ds and his knife just in case. However, he stood down when he finished taking in the situation and realized that this was an overreaction and he got a good look at who bumped him. It was a much shorter woman with wolf ears and tail (why world why) with a long head of red hair that was much brighter and more vibrant than his own. She was significantly shorter than him but that wasn't surprising, he had noticed that average height here was significantly shorter here than back in the UEG. She had her back to him though he could see that she was wearing what looked like a light weight ballistic plate carrier over a light grey jacket and red shirt. On her hip was sheathed a longsword and a dagger behind her back as well. She turned around when she felt her mistake and turned to see him. She was obviously not expecting to see what she did as her light blue eyes went wide as she began looking up at the extremely tall man.

"Ohh..." She shook her head a bit and seemed to return a relatively normal look to her surprisingly delicate looking face, "I'm sorry, stumbled a bit and didn't see you there." She apologized to Clyde as he waved a hand trying to defuse this situation.

"It's fine." Clyde responded while taking another swig of his drink and returning his view to his tacpad.

The woman though kept looking and began putting two and two together with the man's height and stature combined with the white emblem from the back of his shirt, "Hey, are you one of those new guys at Babel? That one with the really heavy armor." Clyde looked at her again and nodded. "Hmm, so that's what you look like under all of that. I admit, you don't look half bad without it." She said that last bit with a bit of a smirk on her face and pep in her voice.

Clyde did chuckle a bit at that. "Please lady, you can do a lot better than me." He then searched his own memory and realized that he had seen this woman before. She was another of Babel's contractors here. If he remembered correctly, he fought with her thought on different parts of the battlefield a few weeks ago during the defense of the Oripathy clinic. "Hey, aren't you another one of the Contractors here? I swear I've seen you before."

She nodded her head, "Yep, I indeed am." She held out a hand to shake, "Elvira Texas, happy to make your acquaintance."

Clyde shook her hand, "You can call me Clyde."

Elvira looked a little confused at that, "Don't want to give a last name?" Clyde shook his head at that. "Ahh, family trouble."

Clyde smirked a little at that and remembered what the other Spartans who managed to make it all the way to their old homes had said about flash-clones and replacements, "Yeah, you can say that."

Elvira nodded her head a smiled weakly, "I know the feeling. I've had plenty of it too. Don't really want to talk about it." She then took notice of the tacpad in his hand and the picture on it of Clyde and two others in similar armor standing together. "Who's that?"

Clyde looked down again and smiled, "My old team, not much I want to say about them though other than that I miss them."

The Bartender came around with Elvira's drink at that time and she picked it up, "You know,..." she started towards Clyde, "How about this? To things left unsaid." She toasted.

Clyde held up his own drink and clinked it with hers, "I'll drink to that."

With that, the two Mercenaries drank not knowing that that was the start of a life changing relationship.
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6 Dec. 2555
2115 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Security Room

Clyde reclined in his seat while blowing some smoke from his cigar out of his mouth and looking his partner in the eye again.

"You know,..." Alex began, "Since you did bring up our flash clones, something pretty interesting happened with one of them while you were gone."

Clyde leaned forward a bit, "And what would that be?"

Alex shrugged again, "I'll let you finish first, don't want to blow your mind too soon. I want to hear the rest of this."

Clyde reclined again with a look of mild annoyance on his face before returning to his recollective face , "Alright, so through some twists of fate, Elvira was assigned to the same combat group as me and the ODSTs from then on and we were seriously impressed by her performances in combat. She was a great swordfighter and fit in with the rest of us almost frighteningly well. The two of us also began talking and interacting a lot more and we hit it off. We got along well probably due to our similarities and eventually she entrusted me his her past. She was a mafia princess from one of the most ruthless and cutthroat clans in her home country. She hated her father and feared her brother so she became a mercenary in order to get away from that life and used her skills from her parents trying to make her an enforcer to earn her paychecks. In return for telling me that, I gave her the truth about me and the Spartan program to be fair."

Alex perked up about that, "Clyde, do you know how stupid that is and how much of a breech of security that is? If we were home..."

Clyde cut him off, "If we were home. We obviously aren't. There's no UNSC here, no ONI, no NAVSPECWAR. There was no one to enforce secrecy and she never told anyone, not even our daughter."

Alex sighed at that knowing that it would be pointless to continue that part, "Alright, so about her."

"Ok, back on track." Clyde looked up at the ceiling trying to find his place in the story, "So, eventually Babel and the Loyalists in the Civil War went tits up when the queen was assassinated and we started losing hard. Babel tried to limit the bloodshed and terminated our contracts while giving us lump sums of our remining paychecks and getting us all transport out. We all were on the same flight out and it was on that flight that Sergeant Michaels and I made Elvira an offer. She accepted and joined our little band on our travels. Hell, after we recovered some more gear from a Prowler's crash site, I even modified a suit of ODST armor for her to use. It was also around then that Michaels took note of our relationship and encouraged us to take the next step so we did. We got married, used some gold we got from a job in RIM Billiton to buy some land in a low Catastrophe area and I built us a house on it. She was the one who initiated the next stage though."

"Having a kid?" Alex rhetorically asked.

Clyde nodded. "We had a daughter, Abbigail though you know her as Texas. Elvira retired from mercenary work as did the rest of the ODSTs. I kept doing it as our family's main source of income. It was an interesting time. Went all over Terra, met all sorts of people, forged a lot of important connections that I used to ensure Abbigail and Elvira's safety. Unfortunately, Abby got caught up in the life we wanted to keep her away from when her uncle managed to track us down. One of my greatest regrets to this day is not blowing the fucker's head off right there. I had my M6Ds with me, all it would have taken would have been one of my 50/40 SAP-HE rounds."

Noticing the rage building on his old friend's face, Alex waved his arms to get his attention. "Clyde, Clyde, focus. Calm down. We can't change the past, just retell it."

This seemed to make him snap back, "Sorry Alex, caught me ranting again. I just get worked up thinking about that bastard."

Alex shrugged and took a drag off of his cigar, "Hey man, happens to the best of us. I've even heard John do it."

"John,..." Clyde looked at him in disbelief, "Ranting out of control. Mister Stoic Leader himself once had something break is perpetual cool. That's got to be an interesting story."

Alex huffed a little, "You bet it is. Find me sometime and I'll tell you."

Clyde leaned back, "So, where was I, oh yeah. So, I don't know what he told her, but a few weeks later, I find her to have vanished without a trace and having only left behind a note that said she was leaving to see The Clan. You can guess what that meant." Alex nodded knowing what he meant. Clyde leaned forward in his seat and looked down at the table, "Me and Elvira braced ourselves for the worst and hoped against hope that she would be ok and eventually that happened when on a rainy night when she came home. Abbigail turned up in a disheveled appearance with minor injuries and a look of total relief on her face. We took her in and that's when she shared her horror story with us. Her uncle had become the leader of the clan after her grandfather had passed and he took it as a personal attack that Elvira left and fled. Also didn't help that he had... let's just say deviant tastes in women and relationships and wanted her."

Alex's eyes went wide at that, "Oh fuck."

Clyde just nodded and said, "Yep. Elvira tried to go home to clear things up and pay off her debt peacefully." He looked down at the table again with a look that Alex identified as grief, "I should have stopped her."

It was then that Alex realized that he had always referred to his marriage and wife in the past tense. That was bad. "This was about when they pissed off the wrong Spartan right?"

Clyde simple nodded again, "He had the gall to invite me to her funeral. He assumed I would work like any other victim of their racket. I didn't. I turned him to a cloud of mist with an M99 Stanchion while he was giving her eulogy. I then got back together with Echo-8 and hunted down every other member of his gang. I hope you don't mind but I used Ascalon a couple times against them."

"YOU STILL HAVE ASCALON!"
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AN: So here in the states it's Memorial Day so I just wanted to put something in this section's notes about that. As for my usual notes, I'm thinking for how Dallas/Clyde will function as an Operator is as a Supporter who is an unholy combination of The Engineer from TF2 and Doomguy. Also Ascalon, what happens when you let Huragok get their tentacles on UNSC heavy weapons.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

6 Dec. 2555
2233 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Hallway Outside Security Room

Blaze was currently taking a stroll through the halls of the landship.

She had been on the opposite end of the ship and thus was unable to respond to the intruder alert before GROM and base security put the threat down. While she was a little disappointed that she wasn't able to help, she was more happy that there were no significant injuries and the threat had been dealt with, apparently singlehandedly by Mroz. In the meantime, she was visiting security to get a full report on the events of the night and maybe see whoever it was who broke in. However, as she walked she came to see a familiar brown haired woman leaning against the wall in the hallway in her full powered armor. Her helmet was off and she was playing with the knife in her hand by tossing it into the air, letting it flip exactly three times, before then catching it by the handle and rolling it across her fingers all in one very natural movement. All of this taking next to nothing of her concentration or attention and happening at speeds faster than she had seen many wield knives in battle.

"Hey Sneg." Blaze greeted her.

"Oh,..." She caught her knife, this time by the blade and looked over to her friend in the hall, "Privet Blaze. What are you doing down here?" She asked as she gestured with the handle of the knife to Blaze and around the hall before flipping it around in her hand and returning it to the hidden scabbard in her suit's vambraces with a single fluid movement.

Blaze looked in awe at her blade work. Sneg was almost entirely a dedicated sniper, but that was impressive knife skills. Combined with her strength and speed, she had a feeling that this "Sniper" could make short work of most enemies in close quarters. "I was just heading down to security to hear what happened earlier. I presume your down here because Mroz dragged you down here when security needed his statement."

Sneg nodded, "Da. He said he needed a favor down here from me so I came down here. Let me just say this, but your security is a little lacking in its own room." Blaze looked confused at that but Sneg moved on before she could figure out what she meant, "That guy is someone Mroz knows very well and one of his fellow Spartan-IIs. He's sitting in talking with him for the moment so I'm just here waiting for him. I would run back to the room to take my armor off, but I don't know when he'll come back out."

That caught Blaze off guard, she knew that Mroz and Sneg weren't exactly the same thing with Mroz being something called a Spartan-II and Sneg being a Spartan-III and that Mroz looked about 5 to 6 years older than Sneg. She chalked that up to chronological difference between the two programs, but from what she had heard from her team was that the intruder was a man in his 40s, significantly older than Mroz. How were they longtime brothers in arms and from the same program? Shaking those thoughts from her head, Blaze returned to her conversation with Sneg. "Ahh, so he's in there?"

Sneg nodded, "Da. They've been in there talking for about two and a half hours now. I hope they come out soon or I'm going to be late for that lesion Jessica scheduled with me. I was going to teach her to fight at night and in low visibility."

"Wait," Blaze began, "You're training Operators now. When did you start?"

Sneg shrugged, "I talked with Dobermann a few days ago and convinced her to let me start running classes for other Operators. While I am predominantly a Sniper in my skillset, I have a broad range of talents. She's letting me run classes on cyberwarfare, specialized combat, combat driving though I think Mroz should be teaching that, and a few other things. I've been doing one on one with Jessica for a while. Girl's got talent and potential, I'm just trying to get her there."

Blaze nodded at that, she had the same views on Jessica and wished the best for the Black Steal Operative. She hopped that Sneg's teaching would be for the best then. "Hmm, didn't know your skills were that diverse. Good to know, now I'll call you when I need a hacker on a mission." Both smiled and relaxed at that before Blaze started again, "So, those were some impressive knife tricks you had right there. Where did you learn them?"

Sneg smiled again, "Oh, those. I learned them from another of Mroz's fellow IIs, Fred. During the Onyx Incident there were a lot of incidents where we found ourselves lying low and having downtime. During one instant of taking cover to avoid a group of Sentinels, GROM was sharing the same building with BLUE Team. While Mroz was interacting with his fellow IIs, I approached out of curiosity and fell into step with them. Eventually to relieve boredom on both our counts, Fred taught me a lot of his knife tricks. I'm nowhere near his speeds, but I'm working on them." Sneg began before realizing she had said the S word and would now have to explain more.

Blaze looked intrigued, "Onyx Incident, I heard Mroz say something about that on our mission last week. He said he would explain later, and didn't you say a while ago that Onyx was your home?"

Sneg nodded as she tried to think of what to say, "That is correct. Alright let me think about what I should say about this. A lot of that mission is classified."

Blaze settled onto a spot to lean against the wall to listen to to woman's story. From hearing Sneg's stories elsewhere, she knew she was in for a long ride.
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7 Dec. 2555
0015 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Security Room

Spartan Clyde-150 sat alone in the security room as he had been doing since he finished his conversation with Alex ended a few hours ago.

In his hand, he took one final drag off of that cigar as he placed it into the ashtray his old teammate had managed to convince security to give him. The smoke was savored before he blew it out of his mouth one last time for the night before looking down at the table. A few hours ago when his interrogation with Kal and Doc ended, Doc had slid him a document in an envelop and a pen saying that this was an alternative way of solving his new problems from his misadventure down here.

Sliding his thumb under the flap of the stiff paper, he opened the envelope and was shocked when he read it. Doc had said that this was a way to repay Rhodes Island with some service, see and spend time with Abbigail a lot, but this was ridiculously good. First, he would just need to put down his information.

Part one was name.

He wondered what he should put down. He knew he should put down Clyde, but did they want anything else? She he put down the name he married into, maybe his number too? He eventually decided what to do.

Clyde Texas

Yeah, sounded better without the 150.

It was also asking for another name, one to use for anonymity reasons, he knew exactly what to put down for it.

Dallas
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0412 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Top Deck.

Whenever Operative Texas needed to take a load off, she found herself on a roof.

It was probably due to being raised in the mountains, elevation reminded her of home and safety, but it was also due to isolation. She was never the most social person, must have inherited her father's awkwardness and her... incident with her extended family did help anything. It wasn't that she didn't like other people, it was just that she never felt that she fit in, that there was something wrong with her, something different.

When she was younger, she was always significantly stronger, faster, and tougher than anyone her age. While it eventually leveled out to her just being an exceptionally strong, tough, and fast individual that wasn't beyond what was normally possible. However, in her youth she had exhibited the physicality of a fully matured adult. This culminated in an incident back when she was in grade school with two bullies. One never walked again and the other was put into a coma for 14 months. While mom and dad prevented it from escalating out of control for the family, she was looked at as dangerous and a freak later. That pretty much killed any chances of having a normal social life right there and was her first encounter with her.

Even after multiple fresh starts, she wasn't able to shake the normal issues and anxieties until she was approached by an old friend of her dad and current employer, Emperor, and introduced with her current group of friends. In fact, the reason she almost never spoke of her past with either her new friends at Penguin Logistics or Rhodes Island was a fear of the same thing happening again.

As much as she loved her father, she was worried and afraid that his presence here would mean an end to that. It was a stress that was killing her and irritating her almost hereditary oral fixation she got from both her her parents. It was something that her normal pocki and candy wouldn't help.

She sung her legs out over the ledge of the ship and let them dangle in the air as she opened her satchel and grabbed a small box from them, cigarettes. She opened the box and placed one in her mouth.

It was a remarkably poor habit even for her, but it had always been something she could do to reduce her stresses and anxiety like the type that had kept her awake all night today. She preferred not to remember where she picked up the habit though.

She was just about to light the tobacco when she just barely managed to catch a grey flash out of the corner of her eye and in a millisecond it was out of her mouth and in a very familiar armored gauntlet. Turning her head a little, she saw an armored man with an older friendly face crouching next to and behind her.

"What have I told you about smoking my Little Rose?" Her father asked her as he sat down next to her on the ledge swinging his legs over the edge as well.

Texas smiled slightly at that, "You were the one who was smoking long before I was born."

Her father gave her a look, "Hey, it's different when I do it." They both chuckled at that as he then reached into another one of his hardcases and pulled out two more cigars. He handed one of them to his daughter. He bit the cap off while she elected to go a little flashy on it by using the edge of one of her swords to do it. She then lit hers before offering her father the lighter so he could light his cigar too.

"See,..." He then gestured with his while blowing out his smoke, "Better."

Texas smiled again, "Yeah, if you say so." She then smiled far more and even giggled slightly when her father then rubbed her head like he had done since she was little.

"Sorry about that, I just wanted to act on that message you gave me." He tried to apologize to her, sighing as he talked. "You know me and that whole no man left behind thing. When I heard you saw more people from the UNSC and I had to check things out myself. Sorry that I got messy, I'll do anything I can to try to prevent this from getting you involved."

Texas breathed in sharply, "Dad, it isn't that. It's just that you always do these sorts of things. You just act when you hear things, you give very little thought to what you're doing. You just need to slow down and have someone there for you." She shook her head slightly at her father's antics. He really did mean it and she loved him for that, she just wanted him to be less boneheaded about it. "Oh and Dad, don't worry about me. We've had incidents like this in the past here at RI and..."

She was cut off by her father, "Better have not been with that white haired stalker, she gives me the creeps."

Texas awkwardly tried to laugh that one off. "Yeah... Definitely not her." She thought to herself how she's going to have to keep that one under raps now.

"As for me,..." Her father began as he reached towards another compartment in his old armor.

"Wait, Dad, how did you get out of security that quickly?" Texas asked finally after it finally sunk in. Her father must only have been in security for a few hours. Normally, protocol was to hold a subject for at least 48 hours. She should know due to her... incident with a certain other Lupo on her first day here.

"About that." He withdrew his hand from the carrying devise and handed something to her as she looked, she realized what it was, an Operator application form and it was stamped approved and signed by none other than the Doctor himself. "As you said, I need someone to keep me in check and make sure I don't keep going off the rails. You willing to be that person?"

She simply stared disbelievingly at the paper in her hands, was this really happening? Did she just hear that her father had just joined Rhodes Island? There was no way this was happening. "Da..D...Dad?" She only managed to stagger out in shock.

"Yes?" He simply responded.

"Did... Did you really join Rhodes Island." Texas looked at him with the brown eyes that Elvira always said were his wide. Clyde could tell that there was some mist in them in the low light.

"Yes Abbigail, I did." Clyde answered while giving his daughter a strong and confident face. "We've always talked that we need some more father-daughter time, now's as good a time as any."

Texas looked back down at the papers, it was real. This was going to be complicated for her to try to keep everything normal, but otherwise she was going to have her father and one of the greatest allies she has ever had near her going forward. She simply reached for the man next to her and gave him a hug. "Dad, you can be an idiot from time to time, but you've always been there." She got back to her spot before taking a drag off of her cigar, "I guess we're coworkers now."

Her father smirked at that, "I guess we are, Texas."

She smiled again, "Alright, Dallas."

Clyde gestured over his shoulder with his cigar though, "Now Abbigail, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine."

With that, she heard a clamor on the ladder behind them as someone else climbed up. She was surprised when she heard the voice of one of her new teammates, Mroz. "Clyde, it's 4 in the fucking morning. This better be..." He finished the climb and saw the two at the top, "Oh."

"Abbigail, meet your Uncle Alex."
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AN: Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. Here's the next section. Also, yes. Texas is a Spartan-2.1 and thus inherited minor augmentations from Clyde making her stronger (though not significantly) than the average human either Baseline or Terran.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

8 Dec. 2555 (UEG Calendar)
0835 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Weight Room

As they had found themselves doing for almost a month now, Blaze and Mroz found themselves doing their morning workouts together in the weight room and just chatting with each other.

This time, Blaze was talking about how Sneg had told her about what she could about the Battle of Onyx that wasn't classified though she mainly had told her about a couple other Spartans.

"So Mroz, is Linda such a hardass as Sneg made her out to be?" Blaze asked as she took a rest between reps and Mroz finish the last of his on the leg press.

"Actually, she probably actually gave you the lesser version of Linda. I just have one thing to say, at least she has Fred to balance her out. With the two of them, John has his hands full with BLUE Team, much less now that he's a Rear Admiral in charge of NAVSPECWAR." Mroz laughed a little at that. One thing that Blaze had noticed over the last few days was that he had been acting a lot more open since that new guy, Dallas arrived and after their brief altercation. It was the strangest thing for her to try to figure out.

Heading back over to the equipment, Blaze looked over to Mroz as he sat up from his machine to go over to where he had put his drink. "Hey Mroz, you've been acting differently lately. Is everything ok?" She decided to be direct. She was just too curious about his sudden about face and wanted a straight answer.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about Blaze?" He looked at her puzzled not sure what she's asking.

"You know,..." She fidgeted and looked around for a second trying to figure out how to clarify this more. "You've been a lot more open in the last few days ever since that guy Dallas showed up which I just find a little odd. The two of you recognize each other and I get that, but you two immediately fought and tried to kill each other so I would think that that would put a crimp on things." Blaze just shrugged, "I don't know why, but this has been strange for me for a while now."

That caused Mroz to look straight at her, he was going to need to find a way to explain things. "Blaze, actually no, Elizabeth." That got her attention, despite knowing it, the pair had rarely used their real names when talking to each other except when something serious needed to be said. "What would you do if someone who was a pivotal part of your early memories and your first true friend or maybe the closest thing you had to family died while you were gone and unable to do anything about it. You then spend almost a decade thinking that they've been long dead then all of a sudden you become stuck in a foreign land of improbable distance from anywhere you know, end up working for an organization you didn't know existed until a few days before you signed on and then said person shows up practically on your door step. What would you think or do?"

This stumped her as she thought, "I... Don't know. Have you two really known each other that long? Alex, I feel that there's something you're not telling me. Remember, here till the end of the line."

Alex sighed at that, now he was going to have to explain that to her. Did he really want to tell her the truth about the Spartans? How would she even react? He knew that she was a very moral and emotional person so he had no clue if she would even remain stable if he said that. Damn it, why is everything so hard here? It was times like this that he missed having ONI support to wipe away any mistakes or difficult scenarios like this. However, he something deep down said that maybe this would take a bit more of the weight off his shoulders. Clyde's words from the other night rung in his head, "There's no UNSC here, no ONI, no NAVSPECWAR. There was no one to enforce secrecy..."

This was going to be either one of his best ideas or the worst, "Yes, we were indeed that close. He was the closest thing I ever had to a sibling growing up."

She looked at him after that with a bit of a confused look on her face. "That must have been quite the age gap between the two of you."

"Not really,..." He started, "This is a little complicated, but remember how I said that I was medically discharged from SILVER Team?" She nodded yes, "Well, it was because I was declared medically dead though revivable. Standard medical procedures where me, Sneg, and Dallas are from is to place that level of casualty into long term suspended animation until we can be revived. I spent about a decade on ice before I was revived. I've also had the same thing happen in the past and spent almost 9 years in stasis that time."

"So it's like what happened with the Doctor then?" Blaze asked, "It's going to be strange to think that you're closer to your 50s than your 30s then." She joked a little at what he had said and he laughed a little too.

"Yes, thought it was a lot more refined. We don't have any recorded problems with long term amnesia from our method. Also, yeah, I know this and find it strange too. However, I've only been active for about 25 years if it makes you feel better about being friendly with an old man." He smiled dryly at his joke and shrugged while taking a swig of his water.

"Hmm,..." Blaze still looked confused. In her head, she tried doing the math in her head. Even with what Alex had said suspended animation, he still claimed to only have been active for 25 years total. Considering that he tends to mean what he says literally unless joking, she had reason to believe that his statement of 11 years combat experience was something that bugged her. It was far more than her 7 and with them sharing the same age, it meant that he had been fighting since he was 14 at the oldest. "Ok then. Alex, does the UNSC have a low enlistment age? I know most militaries here generally recruit somewhere around 16-18, but everything you've said points to you having joined at 14. I just think that something strange is happening."

She watched him put his drink down, exhale sharply, and stand up. "I was hoping that you would never ask that. It's going to be hell to explain and long answer plus I only really trust you to hear it."

She looked very confused at that, "Alex, what are you trying to say."

"Alright,..." He began, "Meet me at my dorm tonight, you're the only one I trust to hear this. I don't like dancing around it so I'll give you the truth."

It finally hit her what he meant, for someone with all the subtlety of an artillery strike, he could be hard to understand from time to time. "Alright then, sounds good though you really don't have to do this. I don't need to know about that for us to stay friends and I'll stop asking if you want."

He shook his head, "No Liz, something is bugging me about this and I just want to get the weight off my shoulders. Just know that you'll have to keep a lid on this after I tell you."

She smiled and nodded her head, "Ok, great to hear that you trust me enough for this though it feels like it came out of nowhere."

Alex smiled a bit, "Maybe for you, but this is a secret that I've had to keep for most of my life now and now I finally have a chance to tell someone about the truth."

She gestured that she understood before she looked down at her watch. "Alright then, I've got to get going. I've got a round or Oripathy treatments so see you later." She toweled herself off before grabbing her bag and walking out while waving.

Alex settled back into the equipment to continue his daily workout when he heard the door open and two more familiar faces walk in, Irina and Clyde. He gave them a look of mild amusement and simultaneous annoyance and sighed, "With how often you two show up right as I find myself alone, I would think that you two are spying on me."

All three laughed at that before Irina started talking. "Well, we may or may not be. You are our teammate you know."

Clyde smiled as he sat down on the bench across from his old friend, "So, me and Irina here just overheard that you planned to tell Blaze the truth. That's pretty brave of you and a great show of trust. You sure?"

Alex sighed again, "Yes, I'm sure. You said it yourself earlier Clyde, there's nothing stopping us from saying this and I think we should tell those we trust most and our superiors the truth for the mean time. I'll get around to the Doctor and Kal'tsit after I trial run things with Blaze."

Clyde stood up and walked over to his former teammate, "Hey man, we won't be able to keep it secret forever. You said the other night that ONI is failing to keep it under raps back home so might as well start lightening it up here. Just let us know if you're going to need any help with breaking this in and we'll be there."

Irina shrugged on her own, "I'll just come to do my bit about the Spartan-IIIs anyway. Plus I want to see this."

"Sneg,..." Alex began, "You are way too curious for your own good." She just shrugged at that before he continued, "Well, thanks for the offer, you can drop in if you want. This is going to be interesting. What's the worst that could happen, she declares a one woman crusade against the Office of Naval Intelligence."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2042 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Dorm Room BA627

"THEY USED CHILDREN!"

Blaze practically screamed when she was told that before she looked around at the glances from the three Spartans. "Alright, where's my chainsaw and this Admiral Parangosky? I have a score to settle." She dryly asked before looking around the room.

She didn't notice Sneg lean over to Mroz and whisper to him, "Wow, you really did have her pinged and her reaction down."

Mroz sighed at that, "I really did." He looked back at Blaze, "Blaze, I need you to stay focused."

"Focused, focused!" Blaze looked both furious and also saddened, "You were, you are, a child soldier abducted from your family for a secret government project to create living weapons. How is this not bothering you two?" She gestured at both of the two Spartan-IIs present.

The two looked at each other and shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure Blaze, we were taken young enough that we had few memories of our homes and from day one we had each other as a dual purpose friend group and surrogate family. Call us jaded, but they kept us as close to content as they could."

Blaze continued to look astounded at his words, "Still, some of you must have tried to escape or go home and why didn't you families try looking for you guys?" The look in her eyes was like she was trying to think of anyway she could make sense of this.

"Oh, yes, many of us. Actually, I think most of us tried to escape at least once." Dallas actually started this time, "In face, the selection for the Special Mission Teams were to get the Spartans who tried to escape the most and most successfully and stick them together. I tried stealing a Scorpion Main Battle Tank and rolling out of the base. You need to hear Mroz's attempt here."

Blaze looked over to the more familiar of the two of them, he looked in thought as he remembered the story. "Well, I snuck out of the base, stole a suit of stealth ODST Armor, snuck onto an Air Force base, stole a plane, used it to board a ship bound for my home colony. The second half happened while I was being shot at by security. All that when I was about 12."

"You did all of that, as a 12 year old?" Blaze looked at him wide eyed as he nodded, "Well, what happened when you got home and why did your family never try looking for you guys?"

Mroz looked down, "It was complicated. It went something like this."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 May. 2522
Nowa-Lublin
Outer Colonies

On a bright and sunny afternoon on a distant colony from Earth, a young man sprinted down alley ways towards a familiar school campus from a distant memory.

He was wearing a tattered and dirty shirt that he had worn under a stolen suit of armor than he had shed before making planetfall. In one hand was a stolen M6G magnum, he would need it to complete his escape.

Coming up to the campus, he waited in the shadows and watched as within the hour a large group of students of all ages walked out speaking a mix of English and Polish. He continued watching before seeing something that he never believed when he had read the report walked, well was wheeled out. It was a kid his age in an electric wheelchair. He was much lankier than the escapee but was uncannily similar, in fact, in many ways they were identical. One way this was true was the face which was the same as his with the exception of a few scars he had received during his training.

He raised the pistol, it was 75 yards. He had made similar shots in his training and could score a headshot at this distance in his sleep. However, even as he leveled the gun at the boy, something was yelling within him to not do it. If he fired, he would be removing an innocent life from existence and futilely trying to replace a family's child. If he pulled the trigger, he would do the same thing ONI had done to him with this poor kid. Did he want to be just like them, or did he want to be his own person.

With the gun shaking in his hand, he eventually snapped back to reality and saw his own hesitation. For the first time in a very long time, he made a true decision. He put the gun down and walked away, eventually sitting down on a curb by the road.

He would sit there for quite a long time with his hands on his face. He didn't know how long he would sit there, but eventually the hiss of an electric motor rolled up to him and he took note of a shadow on the ground. The boy from earlier had rolled up right next to him, "Hey, are you ok?" The boy asked.

He never looked up, he couldn't bring himself to look at the life he almost took, at a near perfect copy of his own face.

"It's ok man, I understand if you don't want to talk. Umm, my name is Alex by the way, you can find me if you want to talk later." The boy said before wheeling himself away.

He just sat there, tears beginning to roll down his face.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I sat there for God knows how long. The ONI recovery team found me late that night and took me back to Reach. When I returned, I was confronted by Dr. Halsey and Chief Mendez. They were impressed by my initiative and skill at escaping and offered me a spot on one of the first three special mission teams along with my other two group members." Mroz finished his story with emotion hidden though still visible in his eyes. "I later got in contact with the other two Spartans who managed to make it all the way to their original homes, Daisy and Ralph. As it turned out, all of us were replaced with shoddy clones designed to die quickly of natural causes as a front to our abduction.

He looked up and saw Blaze on the brink of tears, "It was the shot I never took that was most important of my life."

Blaze shot out of her chair and ran up to him. She wrapped her arms around him and embraced him in a strong, deep, and caring hug. She looked up at him and said three simple words, "I'm so sorry."

"Thank you, Blaze." Mroz thank the woman for her empathy for one in his position. Other than a select few, it had been rare to see any one ever give the Spartans and their repressed emotional damage respect and care. She had just joined that select few

Looking over her, Mroz looked at the two other Spartans. Irina was giving him an approving look, for once not having anything to or wanting to poke fun at him. Clyde simple smiled and nodded his head slowly. He knew how it had felt to finally have someone to tell that truth to and was happy that his brother had as well.

Blaze eventually calmed herself down and ended the hug, taking a step back. "Don't worry. If you ever need someone to talk about this stuff again, I'm here. I'm open to talk about basically anything, your past, your infection..." She was cut off when she said that.

"Damn it, I was trying to keep that under raps." Mroz said as he backed up against a wall and slumped over against the wall. He looked at the two other Spartans who were giving him a disbelieving look and Blaze who look to be trying to non-verbally apologize for unknowingly breaking his secret.

"Alex, is there something you want to tell us?" Clyde asked.

"Alright, I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys. I just didn't know how you would react." He pulled up his shirt revealing his muscular torso and a small scar on his abdomen, around it was growing a small ring of black crystals. "I contracted Oripathy. I'm infected. I just didn't know how to tell you."

Both of the Spartans continued to look at him wordlessly, thinking on what this meant for them and their friend. Eventually, Irina gained enough sense to say something, "Bozhe moy."

Translation: My God.
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AN: And the secret is out. This was an interesting section to write so I hope you guys enjoy. I'm probably not going to be able to put out anything tomorrow so I made things longer than usual today.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

8 Dec. 1097
2042 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Dorm Room BA628

As was part of her nightly routine, Operator Skadi was sitting in the bathtub of her room just soaking and relaxing in the room all to herself...

Or at least she would if it wasn't for the scream from the room next to hers, something about children. From her position, it almost sounded like it was Blaze who screamed which was odd because her dorm was two letters and three decks down. It was those two strangers, Mroz in Sneg in the room next to her. It wasn't that unusual though, they probably just had her over for something.

Anyway, with that over, she can return to her quiet solitude and contemplation in her relaxing warm bath...

Or she would have if it wasn't for the second yell. This time it was definitely from Blaze yelling something about calming down. Skadi sighed at that. On her personal preference, she liked things to remain quiet in the dorm block and it wasn't just her. Rhodes Island had policy that if someone could he heard through their dorm wall, they could be given a noise complaint by anyone else in the block. It wasn't unreasonable, the walls in the dorms were pretty thick and good at taking a good amount of noise, but still. Since no one was in the dorm on the other side of them, she would be the one to have to go let them know that they were being loud.

She was a little unsure if she even should until she heard yet another yell, this time from Mroz, as he simply stated "Damn it." Alright, she was up. She sighed as she got out of her bath and put some clothing on, her hair would take too long to dry and she wanted to pop over now and get back ASAP. It took her a few minutes but she exited the room headed to the next door in the hall.

Walking over to the door to Mroz and Sneg's room, she was about to knock when her sensitive hearing detected something from the other side of the entryway. Normal volume talking. Odd for the volume she had been hearing for a bit. Putting her ear to the door, she listened to what was being said. Currently, Blaze was talking, "Wait, wait, wait. Things like that exist, like really?" She asked incredulously.

Mroz was next to speak, "Yep, they're real, terrifying, why I can't stand the word 'library' any more, and I was given special augmentations to fight them. Said augmentations are probably why I'm still stable."

Sneg chipped in after her partner, "He's true. I've seen them on missions with him as well. Infectious parasitic aliens are real and they're as much as a threat as he makes them out to be." That got Skadi's attention. Those three descriptors the Sniper had just used could be perfectly used to describe the enemy she was created to fight and from Mroz's statement, he may be something like her. It would explain his superhuman and unnatural strength and agility that she had seen for herself.

Blaze was next, "Wait, why do they make you unable to stand the word Library?"

Mroz then sighed, "Do I have to give that story."

"Da." Sneg answered him rather frankly and blatantly.

"Alright,..." Mroz began, "During Operation Breakwater and our mission to Hotel India-06, I was sent to a sub facility dubbed the Library to recover the activation codes for the artifact before they could get to it. The place was crawling in a horde of their bioforms and when I was sent in, insertion went terribly and I lost my helmet and most of my weapons in the crash. It was me, without a helmet, with just an Assault Rifle and a Kukri against a massive army of well armed and fortified biohazards sitting on top of the activation system for a weapon of unimaginable power. Let's just say it was not fun." That kept Skadi's attention. From the naming of the Operation, it sounded like it was directed against some threat from either underwater or that was ocean based, just like her and... her enemy. The biohazard label he put on them also pointed towards them sharing the same threat and being engineered on some level to counter it.

Blaze intervened next, "So what you're saying is that your Oripathy is stable because you were given some sort of super-sciencey treatments to allow you to fight a living, self replicating, memetic, viral, living super-organism that when not dealt with can cause a planetary level biological catastrophe."

"Yes..." Mroz said in a confused sounding tone, "I think. My best guess is that my SCCS nanobots registered that since the Originium was assimilating my tissue, they associated it with them and did their job to contain the infection before it could compromise me and thus reduced my rate of spread to nearly nothing. Wait, Blaze, what are you doing?" She heard him yell that last bit.

That was it, Skadi needed to know what was happening in there. She slid back from the door, raised her boot, and with basically no effort kicked the door. Luckily, it didn't break though the latch did and the top and bottom hinges sheered off. Inside she saw a strange sight. Blaze was currently lifting Mroz almost off the ground and looked like she was either trying to break his back of give him a celebratory and triumphant hug, most likely the latter by the look of pure joy and glee on her face. Meanwhile, Mroz and the newcomer Dallas had the same look of utter confusion and mental blockage at what was happening and Sneg was laughing her ass off at the antics of the others. This all stopped though when they noticed that Skadi had walked in and Blaze put Mroz back down and the other two shot to their feet. "Oh, ahh... Skadi, what are you doing here?" Blaze tried to ask.

Skadi simply ignored her and pointed straight at Mroz, "You have fought an infectious enemy who's goal is the assimilation of all life, is this true?"

Mroz slowly nodded in confusion, "Yeah, were you listening to us talking?" He tried to ask as his brain started doing the math in his head about what she meant.

"So it is true," Skadi then began, "It appears that non-Aegir have fought them as well and, from how you described, have won as well."

It was then though that Mroz's brain put two and two together and realized what she was talking about. Together, both of them asked the other the same question, "You've also fought the Seaborn/Flood?"

They then both looked wide eyed at each other and then everyone asked the same question together, "The what?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9 Dec. 2555
1140 Hours
Epsilon Indi
Harvest Orbit
UNSC Midnight Ride

Captain Murai Sakamaki was currently taking a long ride on one of her ship's many elevators towards the flight deck.

ONI had assigned some Specialized Assets to assist on the Midnight's mission to set up research and exploratory bases on the other side and defend them. She was on her way to greet them and she read a datapad on the long trip.

Something was was little appreciated about the Paris and other UNSC Frigate classes were their sheer size. While still among the smallest weight classes of warship in UNSC inventory, they were still significantly larger than any oceangoing warship in human history in terms of size, volume, and mass. As such, while they could often be flown by as little as 200 as their full crew, they could carry a very large number of passengers. This would also be critical to their mission. Over the last few days, the Midnight's passenger quarters had been getting full as the ship was being loaded to capacity with a very large complement. Being loaded aboard now were 500 scientists which would make up the core of the mission, an entire Marine Corps Marine Expeditionary Brigade plus all their heavy equipment, 4 additional Pelicans bringing their sum total of birds up to 12, all 450 or Major McDonnel's ODSTs, multiple additional Dumb AIs (which Corvis was already angry with due to them eating up his broadband), 100 ONI Agents, a full load of nuclear weapons including a NOVA Bomb, 3 Huragok, and one Sangheili who was currently sharing the elevator with her.

"Honorable Captain, do we have any idea who these so called assets we have been sent are?" Tase 'Kofam, Zealot of the Swords of Sangheilios, Scion of her keep, last of her bloodline, first of her species to join the Office of Naval Intelligence, many other titles, but most importantly long time member of her crew, good friend, and great fighter asked her commanding officer.

"No, Tase, I don't. However, I do know that they were sent by CINCONI herself." That made her think for a bit, why would Admiral Osman send them more aid on this mission. They already had more firepower than it took to invade a Shield World (and she would know, they did invade a Shield World with less). They were already the most heavily armed exploratory mission in history, why would they need more. Also, who exactly would they be sending? They already had basically every skillset both scientific and military covered.

"Well Captain,..." Tase began again while shifting her weight onto the deactivated energy staff customary to female Sangheili warriors, "You know what I always say about anything that happens this suddenly and without explanation."

"Yes, yes Tase." The Captain began while laughing a little, "I do think that that joke is funnier when told in Sangheili though."

The elevator came to a stop, signifying that they had arrived on the Flight Deck and soon the doors slid open. "It appears that I won't have time to give it in your preferred format then Captain, I'll be waiting in the Operations Room when you're finished." They both gave the other their cultures' variation of a respectful bow before continuing on their way to their respective objectives.

Captain Sakamaki had been told to meet their newcomer at Landing Platform 5 which was at the far end of the Port Flight Deck. She would have a good walk in, though it wasn't like she would ever turn down a chance to take a walk around her ship and see her crew.

She stopped her walk several times to greet and talk to various members of her ship's rainbow flight crew as they went about their jobs on deck, but she eventually arrived within sight of the ship on the landing deck. At first she thought it was a standard Pelican, though a closer observation revealed its extended engine assembly, dark grey paint, ONI emblems, and various additions marking this to actually be a much rarer craft, a D80 Condor the rare Slip Space and Stealth capable variant of the Pelican normally reserved for ONI Black Ops teams. Ok, this was odd. A second look revealed a possible preliminary explanation as she saw an ONI Agent talking with a... was that a Spartan?

She almost ran the last bit up to the Condor she came up to the pair of figures as the ONI agent finished talking with the Spartan and began walking back towards the craft and the Spartan turned to her. From his height, she could tell even at this distance that he was one of Irina's fellow Spartan-IIIs which was confirmed when she saw his number which denoted that he was a part of Beta Company, the same as Irina.

He turned to her as she came up and removed his helmet, "Excuse me. Captain Murai Sakamaki, correct?" He asked her.

She put on her best professional though warm smile and nodded, "I would hope so, all the uniforms I've been issued have said that."

He smiled silently at that, "Alright then ma'am. I believe Admiral Osman let you know that we were coming." The Captain nodded again and confirmed what he was saying, "Good, I'm Spartan Maxwell Beta-312. Irina was my best friend during training and one of the few friends I had period. Me and my team volunteered as soon as we heard about this mission."

"Hmm,..." Captain Sakamaki thought to herself, she had heard that number before and realized where she had seen it, "Spartan B312, as in the former NOBLE-6 and ONI's Grim Reaper." Max nodded, "Well, I've been privy to your whole record and you can call me impressed. I'm honored to have you on with this mission. You spoke of a team, where are they?"

"Oh," Max shrugged, "They're still on the Condor, they're taking their monthly dose of Smoothers and will be out in a second."

Smoothers, that could only mean one thing.

Out of the hatch of the Condor then stepped out three more Spartan-IIIs waring MJOLNIR but holding cases labeled SPI Mk. IV continuing the traditional armor of their Spartan Generation. Each of them also had a number denoting the last Company of Spartan-IIIs, one that officially never existed, Gamma Company.

"Ma'am, DAGGER team has been tasked to this mission. We'll be on standby as a replacement or hopefully supplement to GROM on any mission you would usual send them on."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: So Chapter 4 is now finished and boy was that a wild ride. Also, anyone remember that friend Max Irina mentioned while sleep talking in Chapter 1, yes, he's Mister Hyper Lethal Vector himself. Also, yes Alex completed a Flood Library under those conditions and no, he's not exaggerating.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

8 Jan. 2556 (UEG Calendar)
2230 Hours
Undisclosed Location
Kazimierz

Lying next to his partner, Spartan Alex-148 looked out around his cover to verify that it was safe to move.

Rhodes Island was recently tipped that Reunion was using Oripathy Clinics as a front for fundraising and illegal activity in the nation of Kazimierz. The Spartans had the critical mission role of locating the transit hubs they were using as stops for their convoys so that the local authorities and more RI teams could strike them. Based on the numbers of Reunion personnel they had encountered thus far, they had a feeling that they were getting close. Bringing up the Rear was Blaze's team who would serve as a QRF if they were detected and emergency extraction was being handled by Clyde who was at their basecamp. He hopped it wouldn't end like some of his other projects during missions in the past.

It was a pretty well thought out plan all things considered and it didn't have the telltale aspects of a trap like they had walked into in Leithanien a few months ago. Even if it did turn into one, they had a plan B and C this time to avoid things going that messy this time.

Seeing nothing ahead of them in the forest below them, Mroz signaled to Sneg that the path was clear ahead of them and it was ok to move before taking point. "You know Sneg, what's up with us and always being put on recon missions?"

Following him after squeezing through a gap in the rocks, she responded, "I mean, we're Special Operations. Recon is one of our main priorities though I do agree that it is strange that all of our missions thus far as Operators have been as forward recon."

"Well,..." Mroz began while looking back at her while continuing his inching along the cliff face, "Except for that Hostage Rescue mission in Victoria."

Sneg could be heard snorting at that over squad com, "True, but that was over in like what, 5 minutes, that's a raid not a mission."

"And the difference is?" Mroz asked while stepping off and onto the flat bit of ground that was the continuation of their path.

"Time." Irina answered, "A mission is at least a few hours to a few days. A deployment is a anything longer than a few days."

Mroz laughed a little at that, "Those the technical definition or your definition?"

He looked back at her as she climbed up too and slowly shook her helmet, "Who's the one with a reputation for stumping AIs?"

He responded back with a simple, "Who was smart enough to be made team leader?"

They both chuckled a little at that before she finished with, "Touché." They then returned to their trek through the forested mountains and listened intently to the sounds of nature and the animals. If they heard anything off it would be a signal that they may have been close to their objective or to a group of tangos. They also put one eye to their motion tracker.

It was a dead silent night, only the wind whistling off the rocks and through the trees provided them with any noise. While it didn't feel like an ambush or a trap was coming, they both had the same feeling. Something wasn't just right out here.

However the silence was quickly broken when they both heard a voice over the radio from camp. For some reason, Amiya thought it was worth it to come along with this mission too. It was to cripple a major leg of the Reunion Movement's war effort via neutralizing one of their main sources of funding so she had came to administer on the ground tactical and command support from base. From what he had seen of her command, she was a good leader and tactician despite her age. "Have you two made any progress in locating the camp?" She asked over coms.

Mroz put a hand to his helmet, unnecessary but a force of habit, and answered, "Negative command. We are still searching and haven't encountered anything other than some oddly alerted patrols out here." He wondered why she was directly asking them. Amiya did say to try to maintain operational secrecy for the duration of this by avoiding direct radio contact with base unless needed.

"Alright then." She began, "We think we have a clue to their location." That caught both Spartans' attention.

"Say again actual." Sneg said into her helmet.

They both hear Amiya clear her through before beginning. "We're seeing smoke from out position and from some of our drones. It looks like they had an accident and gave away their position."

"Roger that command." Mroz took his hand off his helmet and looked at the sky before spotting the smoke that Amiya had reported, "We'll sweep the area and then report back to base."

"Great, stay safe both of you. Out." Amiya then closed the com and the two Spartans looked at each other.

"Hey..." Sneg got his attention, "I bet you that we'll find something that isn't our objective there."

Mroz looked at her and gave her a strange look under his visor. The Spartan-III had said a lot of strange things and made weird predictions so this was another one. "What makes you say that?"

"It's simple," She put both of her hands up and let her rifle hang by its sling, "This seems very convenient. There is an accident with a fire while we are on a Search and Destroy mission that gives away the target's location. I bet you that something else found them and used them for target practice."

Mroz climbed up onto a ridge before going back and helping Sneg up the same ridge, "Yeah, like what? There isn't much out here that could do that."

"I'm not sure." She began, "Maybe some megafauna, angry locals, each other. Remember, we know they have defectors and internal conflicts." She shrugged again, "What's the worst that could happen."

Mroz chuckled again, "I can think of a few things, but they're all back home."

With that, the pair resumed their silence. Only communicating with hand signals and status lights in their helmets. It was still oddly quiet though it was now being occasionally broken by what sounded like animals and what may have been distant thunder from the incoming rain storms for later that night. Combined with the bright white light from the full moon gave the whole area an eerie feeling to it that was sensed but ignored by the two super-soldiers sneaking their way through it.

Along their walk, they encountered little of note before they came across a clearing with tall grasses and weeds. The two of them went prone and began to slowly crawl towards the source of the smoke across the wide clearing. However as they did, Sneg felt her hand hit something in the grass and mud. She looked towards it and suddenly realized that she just grazed a hand attached to a dead body. She flashed her status light red twice with a thought, the Spartan signal for halt. She got into a crouch and saw Mroz stop moving on her HUD. She needed to take a closer look at this so she moved towards the object. She didn't believe it at first, but this man was wearing the white mask and tunic of the Reunion Movement and was lying next to several other bodies. "Hey, Mroz. Take a look at this." She said while gesturing for her partner to come over.

"What is it Sneg?" Mroz asked while he crouch walked over and stopped and stared when he spotted the body. "Wait, did you..." He watched her shake her head as he asked.

"No, I didn't kill him. I just found him and..." She pointed to the other bodies, "His friends as we were moving." She got closer to the body and looked it over for any signs of who killed this man. Finding nothing on this side, she flipped the body over onto its chest and looked at his back. Immediately, she found what looked like the culperate, a small hole in the center of the man's back just left of his spine. She rolled his shirt up and got her knife out to see if they could dig anything out of the wound that could be a clue.

As she did that, Mroz opened his coms to ask Amiya if they knew anything about this. "Command, this is Mroz. I'm looking at a dead Reunion patrol out here that my team did not have contact with. Do we have any other units in the field or are there anyone we know about?"

Amiya sounded confused in her response, "Umm, no.. Not that I know of. You two are the only recon team we have out there. Can you describe what you're looking at?"

"Roger command." Mroz surveyed the area and relayed what he saw, "We're in a clearing about two clicks from the smoke. I'm looking at about 6 bodies who look like they were killed mid stride while moving away from the contact point. All are Reunion or at least wearing the colors. Sneg is currently checking one of the bodies for clues."

"Alright," Amiya took in the information with an audible sigh, "Radio me when you have more but in the meantime progress with the mission and don't hesitate to call for support if needed." She signed off.

Mroz looked back at Sneg as she put her knife away and pulled something out of the wound. "She looked at him and reported, "This body is old, probably a few hours. He's infected so biology may be different but I saw something strange. It looked like he was in the late stages of radiation sickness." She handed him her find. It was a small slug of what looked like compressed metal powder that had a faint glow. It was slightly smaller than 9 millimeters in diameter and had a faint sickly green glow to it. It looked degraded like some of it had dissolved or melted in the body so it wasn't fully recognizable and any marks it would have were long lost. He put it in a hardcase in his armor for safe keeping.

"Alright,..." He looked to his partner, "I think we've seen everything there is to see here. Let's move."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Same Time
8 Miles Northwest of GROM's position
Rhodes Island Field Base

Currently, Clyde was lying in the field base's motor pool under one of the MRAPs that were earmarked for rapid insertion and extraction of Operators on this mission giving it a tune up.

"Spanner." He told his daughter who was handling the top of the engine on this. She slid him the tool and got back to her work. While she was no engineer, she did have a knack for cars if her job and fascination with them growing up were any indication. Like father, like daughter.

Texas on the other hand was also reading some briefings and reports on her tablet was she worked from her position. There wasn't much that needed to be done up here that her father didn't get when he did his sweep of the engine block so she was mostly just handing him the tools he needed as he continued the tune up. "Hmm..." She hummed to herself after reading a recent news editorial.

She heard the wheel sled roll out from under the vehicle as he put the spanner back and to take a drink of his coffee. He took note of her face as he did, "Hey, what do you have there?" He asked while pointing at her tablet.

"Oh, this, just some reports and local news." She shrugged as she said that and leaned on the tool drawer. She continued her reading as the story in particular was very odd and interesting to her.

"Alright then,..." He asked as he stood up and walked over next to her to grab his cigar from the ashtray and stood next to her. "What's the scoop?" He leaned over to read the tablet too, helped that he had a two foot height advantage over her.

"Strange disappearances all over the region." She tilted it to allow him to see it. There was a picture of a partially burned and abandoned town. "There have been strange disappearances all over this region for a few months now. At first it was just individuals and then it became entire households that were isolated and recently entire villages."

Dallas looked his daughter in the eye confused and interested. "Entire villages?" He took a drag off his cigar taking that in, "That's a lot of people, do they have any idea who's doing this?"

Texas shrugged, "They're clueless. The main suspect is Reunion though there's reason to doubt it." She kept reading and looked away from her father.

The pair sat down on the bumper of the MRAP and continued their discussion. "So, what are those reasons for doubt? And by that nature, are the authorities doing anything about this?"

"Well,..." Texas began while scrolling down, "Apparently, ultra-high temperature scorch marks like from lightning or some particularly potent arts are about the only weapon evidence detected. They've also found some strange pink crystal shards that are very chemically unstable, tungsten shards, and trace radioactive materials at the attack sites. There also have been no survivors which is very much not Reunion's MO and they seem to even target villages of entirely infected."

"Yeah,..." Dallas looked down, "That definitely isn't Reunion's usual method of operations."

Texas just nodded at her father, "As for what the authorities are doing, they're evacuating the region onto a nearby mobile city and the Knights are going to be stepping up their patrols and search and rescue for survivors."

"Hmm..." Dallas stood up and then placed his now spent cigar into the ashtray to let it burn out. "Well, interesting times we live in."

It was then though that the door to the motor pool was thrown open with Blaze bursting through with an urgent look in her eyes. "Ahh, you two! We need you in the control room."

Dallas and Texas both looked over with Texas starting, "Blaze?"

Dallas spoke next, "What's happening. Did Mroz and Sneg find the objective?" His mind raced trying to figure out what could have necessitated this.

"Yes,..." Blaze started, "They found it, but they also found something else." She gestured towards herself, "Come on, we have their helmet cams in the control center." She turned back as she started running, "You two need to see this!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: New chapter starting, yay. You know, something that I do find amusing is just how tall my characters and Spartans in general compared to AK characters. I actually did the math and the tallest Arknights characters are in the 190cm range which is a few inches shorter than Irina who is a Spartan-III at the low end of their height. Once you get into the IIs, there is only one canon character on Terra who approaches their height and that is Patriot at 2.5 meters tall (estimate I got on the Reddit), but then again, Kurt is also exactly that tall without any armor.

I may write an Omake where Kurt and Patriot somehow meet each other then just so that these two forever used to looking down at others finally have an equal.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

9 Jan. 2556
0120 Hours
Reunion Camp
Kazimierz

Mroz and Sneg laid prone on a small raise in the terrain at what was their objective and it was just as Sneg had predicted.

Abandoned and burning.

With a thought, Mroz turned his helmet's camera on and put it as open on the Rhodes Island Local Network. He instructed Sneg to do the same before signaling back to camp. "Actual,..." He alerted Amiya with, "I just opened my helmet cam, you seeing this too?" He then moved up to a crouch to afford her a better view and took in a better look for himself. There were around 7 buildings that looked to be some prefab concrete structures. A couple vehicles with Reunion markings were laying in various states of damage around as were a few dozen bodies in various states of violent death.

Both Spartans heard Amiya mumble something in shock on the other end before she responded in full, "Yes GROM, I see it." There was audible disbelief in her voice. It was understandable, no one ever expected this. "Can you two move in? We should probably get closer to document this."

Mroz looked over and nodded to Sneg who began moving in. "Copy that Actual, team is Oscar Mike." He got up and began moving towards the camp and saw Sneg flare her thrust system and rapidly climbed the wall up to the roof of the tallest building so that she could survey the scene from above. Mroz would cover the scene from the ground. It was almost frighteningly familiar.

He went over to inspect one of the bodies and flipped it over. Where its chest used to be was a large and very nasty wound. It looked to be a severe burn in a deep wound that was aggravated by what looked like burst tissue in the chest cavity. Most likely an internal explosion from superheated bodily fluids. Hell of a way to go that he had seen before. He moved to another one and found its chest blown completely open by what looked like a small explosion just below the surface of his skin. There was also evidence of several puncture wounds in this guy in his back and side.

Looking around a bit more, Mroz spotted what looked like the leader of this group due to his red heavy armor and very large and expensive looking great sword. His body was laying slumped against one of the walls. The only mark on him was a small, almost perfectly cauterized hole drilled straight into his cranium. From the perfect hole in the wall, it looked like it went straight through his helmet as well. Crouched in front of the body and removed the helmet revealing a shocked face on the 30 something Sarkaz's face. He checked the helmet and found that there was a small camera in it. He took it and placed it in his hardcase to take it with them to review the footage back at base.

Mroz continued his sweep as Sneg surveyed the area using the full spectrum capability of her ORACLE optic. "Hey, Mroz." She signaled, "A lot of these scorch marks are still hot according to the sight. What do they look like to you down there?"

Mroz leaned closer to a line of them across a wall. It looked like suppressive fire used on them. The marks were pretty deep in the wall and according to the temperature sensors in his gauntlets, were still hot just as Sneg reported. "I'm not sure." He wracked his brain trying to think of some explanations, "I can think of two explanations right off the bat. First is some very powerful and precise fire arts. I'm not too sure about that one because I'm not fully sure what arts can and can't do. I'll have to ask a Caster, but it's more likely."

He could feel Sneg's eyes digging into the back of his helmet at that. "And the other?" She asked.

"This is very unlikely. But,..." He looked up to her and shrugged with his left arm while keeping his right on his Battle Rifle, "A directed energy weapon. I'm not sure about that one though." He looked back up to his partner and tilted his helmet.

"What do you mean by your not sure?" She asked down from her roof.

"Well, we know that firearms tech is very much behind here so that it took the best engineer among the Spartan-IIs a decade of experimentation before he could get weaponry to a level similar to back home. If that's the case, I doubt they would have weapons on par with what we normally associate with DEWs back home." He took note of her shift in posture at that, it was a usual Spartan gesture for acknowledgement.

"True,.." She responded, "I also doubt that anything back home could have followed us here. I mean, what would the odds be?"

With that the two of them returned to their scanning, Amiya and everyone back at base still probably watching and listening to them intently. Mroz took note of the unusual blast patterns on several explosions. Normally, explosives leave behind fragmentations, not necessarily shrapnel, but always something. However, there was no evidence of that here and it appeared to have melted rock and metal near the point zero of the explosion. Odd, but not unexplainable. Sneg meanwhile took in and recorded the EM Spectrum activity out here. She noted higher than normal background radiation and odd readings over all, however she also noted something else. "Mroz, I'm seeing a heat signature in that building next to you. Looks humanoid."

"Solid copy GROM-2." Mroz raised his Battle Rifle and walked over to cover beside the door. "I'm going to breech. Cover me if this goes hostile." Sneg pinged her status light green at that. He knew that he had some help from above then. "Alright, BREECHING!" Mroz yelled into his helmet as he looked at the door through his peripheral vision and sent his boot into the door and the door off its hinges. Before the wooden barrier landed, Mroz was already in the room and sweeping with his rifle, flashlight on. It looked like a storage room with crates full of what looked like illegal weapons, Originium, and narcotics stacked up to just above his head level. It wend on a good ways and Mroz slowly swept the building.

Rounding a corner, Mroz felt something hit his armor from a corner he hadn't checked yet and saw the heat signature Sneg had mentioned. It was a young, teenage looking, woman in a Reunion tunic and body armor. She was holding a hand crossbow and trying frantically to reload it and fumbling bad. Her hood was down and her mask off showing the look of pure terror in the poor kid's eyes. Mroz simply walked over and with a very slow and weak kick (for a Spartan that is) sent to crossbow flying and clattering out of her hand before picking up the girl by the handhold on the plate carrier and dragging her to her feet with one hand. The kid only responded with a simple whimper and holding her hands up in front of her face defensively while saying, "Please, no. I don't want those things to get me." In something just barely above a whisper.

"Rhodes Island Actual, we have a prisoner. Send a vehicle."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9 Jan. 1098
0800 Hours
Rhodes Island Field Base
Kazimierz

Amiya was walking out of their impromptu interrogation room.

Their subject, a young Kuranta woman whom Mroz and Sneg had found last night in their sweep of the camp last night, had proven remarkably cooperative for a captured member of Reunion. Normally, the only way to get information out of them was through Ursian "Active Measures" or Dr. Kal'tsit's "Enhanced Interrogation." She, Nadia, apparently believed that anything was better than the "things" she said that destroyed the camp and killed her comrades.

That itself was another thing she found very odd about the events that she was told about. While she had taken detailed notes on the interrogation, Nadia just didn't happen to know much about what happened that night.

She had said that an unknown force had attacked the camp with unknown weapons from considerable distance. With the speed they attacked, they didn't have time to adequately defend themselves and were quickly overran. She only survived because her leader had thrown her into the storage room due to her age and low rate of infection making her her unit's designated survivor.

In the time after that, she heard voices far too deep to be human so some so high pitched that she though it was a barking dog at first. They were speaking a language that she couldn't understand and they ransacked the camp looking for something. She choked up when she talked about how it sounded like they executed some of her friends and dragged other off to who knows where.

She felt the woman's horror and sorrow there and ended the interrogation there. Hopefully Dallas and Sneg had managed to get something out of that camera Mroz recovered.

Entering the Tech Room, she was greeted by the three Spartans in various sections of the room working semi-independently on various individual projects. A couple Operators were in there too mostly observing the three way discussion the Spartans were participating in.

"Seriously Mroz, she did that?" Dallas asked from his position working on some computer components.

Mroz nodded at that, looking up from his work on their armor on the table. "Yep, she can tell you herself. Isn't that right Sneg."

"Correct my dim witted partner." That got an audible groan from Mroz and a laugh from Dallas and Blaze, "I hacked a Smart AI when I was 10 and am considered the best hacker in the entire Spartan Program." She pointed to herself and pumped out her chest with pride.

Mroz looked like he was about to have a comeback when he noticed that she had entered the room. He moved to greet her instead. "Oh, morning Amiya. What are you doing down here?" He gestured to her with his tools.

She gave everyone a small but friendly smile and said, "Good morning everyone." in her usual tone. "I'm here to check in with you to see how the work on that camera is coming."

Dallas looked back up at the celling and blew some smoke from one of his ever-present cigars out of his mouth before looking right at her, "Well, we would have it open by now,..." He looked at Sneg who was working on her sniper rifle, "If SOMEONE would take a break from recalibrating her optic for the 8th time this morning and worked her implied computer magic on this thing. I can't make heads or tails of this encryption."

Sneg huffed a little at that before sitting up from the table she was using as a chair and sighed. "Alright, alright. I just wanted to make sure I had my optic zeroed. Not my fault I want to land my shots." She said rather annoyed as she sat down in the chair in front of the computer and got to work.

"Alright,..." Dallas began again, "It'll take her a few..."

He was cut off by Sneg before he could finish with her simply saying "Done."

Dallas looked at her in shock before looking over to Sneg who gave him a smug glare and then over to Mroz who looked up from his armor work. "As I said," Mroz began, "Best hacker I've ever seen."

Sneg rolled back in the wheeled chair allowing everyone else to congregate around the computer monitor as the video file was pulled up by her with the wireless keyboard she kept on her lap. She hit play on it and let the events of the night be shown from the perspective of the Reunion leader. The Operators watched mouths agape at the later stages when the culprits made themselves visible.

"Umm, guys, what the hell are those?" Blaze asked out loud at the strange sight of the video.

In an oddly calm voice, Mroz answered her. "Remember how I said that the UNSC was primarily a Colonial Defense Force? Well, those are some of the most common things we have to defend them from." The matter-of-factness in his statement feeling unnervingly calm about these creatures for something that just ripped a man in half on the screen.

What was stranger about the Spartans' reaction though was when this man was killed by a bright flash from the vast distance as they immediately cringed and eyed each other. Mroz was again the first to speak again, "I suggest you two Up-Armor your helmets like I do with those in the field."

"Wait, what are those? What just killed him?" Amiya asked.

"Misery." Mroz answered.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: What have I done, I've unleashed the Jackal Sniper upon Terra. Also, as many of you guessed with the last section, the Covie Seps have arrived on Terra as well. Let's just say that some bigger fish will need to be fried so war may make strange bedfellows at least temporarily.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

9 Jan. 1098
0830 Hours
Rhodes Island Landship
Doctor's Quarters

It was late in the morning, but the Doctor was still deep asleep and probably not going to be awake for a few more hours. This was however acceptable due to him having spent 54 consecutive hours awake continuing his new project on Mroz's seeming Originium immunity with Kal'tsit. While she was handling the nanotech in his blood, he was using his background as a neurologist to research the anti-intrusion mechanism in his nervous system. Apparently those implants he claimed were there to compartmentalize his nervous system were actually there to prevent any sort of hijacking his biology by causing near complete restructurings of his nervous system on regular intervals and by creating short circuits, for lack of a better word that confuse attempt to enter the system and often causing severe damage to anything trying to enter. This apparently vaporizing any Originium crystals that get close to his nervous system.

Anyway, after his breakthroughs, he was practically told by the medical staff that he needed to sleep and was practically sedated into it by the medics. That left him in his current situation. Peacefully asleep in his quarters.

With his body inactive though, his mind wandered. While asleep, the Doctor underwent a process shared by most vagally intelligent creatures, Dreaming. Not just any type of dreaming, but highly vivid and detailed dreams. He had always reported that he had strange and oddly familiar dreams for his entire life. Records even point to him having the same back before the Sarcophagus.

Right now, he was having one of the ones that were the most recurring to him.

He felt small, almost like a baby or very young child and oddly calm as he was clutched by a large figure protectively. Said figure was a strange woman. She was tall at around 7 feet tall and had an ephemeral beauty to her with her long head of white hair and her extremely pail and almost grey skin making her appear more like a ghost than a living being. Her clothing was something between a suit of heavy armor and a graceful gown that seemed to flow around her comfortably despite the plates mounted upon it (or making it up, he wasn't sure which). Strangest was her face which despite lacking a nose, was one of the most beautiful faces he had ever seen in his life. She was walking down a long cave with him in her arms and looked down at him with caring and loving eyes that had a regretful look in them that she was fighting against.

In a sweet voice that could be said to sound like music, she tried to calm him. "Do not worry child. You will be safe with him. He will show you the many aspects of this world that I cannot. You will need all that he can teach you for you to do the great things you are destine for. Don't fear little one, your knowledge..." She put a finger to his head, "willpower..." she moved it down to the center of his chest, "and your Genesong..." She spread her hand out and laid it on his entire chest, "shall carry you far and open many doors for you. I'm sorry that I must do this, but you shall see me again and I will give you what you deserve now. You will meet many companions in your travels and make many friends. Some will be sent by me to monitor and guide you, but it will be up to you to ultimately choose your path."

She continued to walk and neared the mouth of the cave where a shorter but still tall male silhouette that was waiting out there. He looked back up to the woman who looked to be mouthing "Goodbye" when a loud buzz woke him from his dream.

Slowly rising from his bed, the Doctor groaned as he sat up. He felt like shit as he looked at the clock. He had only gotten about 2 and a half hours of sleep total. Aww well, better than nothing and he would be back to normal once he got some coffee and his normal complex mix of anti-psychotics in him.

He continued to look around the room before he noticed that there was a red light glowing on his room's intercom signifying that he had a message waiting for him on the other end. Climbing out of his bed and stumbling over to it, he pushed the button and heard a simple voice from the other side but he was too groggy to make out who the voice was from.

"Doctor,..." The voice began the address, "You have a call waiting down in the coms room from Amiya and her Task Force. It's addressed to you and Dr. Kal'tsit specifically so you're presence is requested down here." The Doctor paused at that. Amiya was a very competent fighter and commander, she would only be calling back to base if something very bad was happening.

"Thank you for the heads up. I'll be down there momentarily." The Doctor hung up on the intercom and walked over to his dresser as he began changing out of his night clothes and putting on the scrubs and overcoat that were his trademark. As he walked out of the door, he put the old helmet on his face and pulled his hood up as he began his walk towards the communications center of the landship. His mind was racing trying to think of what would be bad enough to necessitate Amiya get back into contact with them.

Entering the communications room, he walked over to the private conference room that Amiya's call had been directed to and opened the door to see a very bored and impatient looking Kal'tsit sitting down in one of the seats at the end of the table opposite to the presentation screen at the other end. On screen were two input boxes asking for their security credentials. Kal'tsit's box had already been filled in so he walked over to the keyboard at the head of the table to put his into the system. As he did, she just looked at him with a blank and judgmental face, "You're late."

He just shrugged at that, "So, I was working on our project with Mroz's biology for the past 2 days. I decided to prioritize working towards our goal of improved Oripathy treatments you know, like our organization is designed to do, rather than my own health and sleep schedule. You can check with medical that they told me to go to bed already a few hours ago." He sighed as he input his 12 digit security code and palm-print scan to unlock and answer Amiya's call as he took up a seat opposite to Kal'tsit and ignored her glare as the screen lit up into a Rhodes Island logo before the loading screen on the bottom of the screen completed and revealed Aniya on the other end who smiled once the two way link was established.

"Doctor, Dr. Kal'tsit,..." She greeted both of her superiors with a smile after confirming their presence on the call. Her faced turned to a different looked though when she began talking again, "We have a situation developing here beyond the original scope of our mission. I'm sending you a video file we found on our recon sweeps and let Mroz, Sneg, and Dallas explain."

With that, she slid back from the console and showed that the had set it up on one of the large mess tables in the camp with the three Spartans sitting down and everyone else in the operations team standing around them. "Doctors, as Amiya has just explained, we have an unexpected situation developing out here that if we don't deal with it ASAP, it will develop into a full scale emergency." Mroz explained as he looked into the camera stoically.

The two leaders of Rhodes Island looked at each other, forgetting their previous conflict, and nodded at their opposite. "Explain Mroz. We need to know what's happening." The Doctor began as Kal'tsit got a notepad out to record anything of note that came from this impromptu briefing.

"Well,..." Mroz began trying to figure out how to phrase things by looking around the room he was in. "We've identified a threat from my, Sneg, and Dallas's home has that has arrived here. At first, you're all probably not going to believe us except for you three, Amiya, Blaze, and Texas, but we have hard evidence of this stuff." Mroz looked at the three before looking back to the conference. "Doctors, what if I told you that there was sentient life on Terra other than humanity?"

"That... that would be... something." The Doctor said into the conference with his confused look hidden by his mask.

While everyone was distracted by looking at the Doctor, they failed to notice Kal'tsit's reaction to that.

They knew.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 Hours Later
Rhodes Island Field Base
Kazimierz

Mroz was now standing up and gesturing with a ruler at the projection from the holographic projector Sneg had rigged up and was running images through. He was having to provide a briefing on their new enemy, one the three Spartans were intimately familiar with, the various races of the Ex-Covenant.

They had to sanitize it considerably, Terra didn't appear to have aerospace tech beyond medium lift chemical rockets and satellites so they had to scrub any references to space or planets from this as to not sound too outlandish. Instead, they were taking advantage of the fact that most of the planet was unmapped due to magnetic anomalies caused by catastrophes on the edges of the mapped regions to claim that they were from the area that has been unmapped by neither any of the Terran Powers or the UEG. They wouldn't be directly lying, just not giving the full truth.

Now, back to the briefing.

Using the remote in one of his hands he fast-forwarded the Reunion leader's helmet cam showing their group's doomed fight against one of their scouting groups. It showed a familiar reptilian alien with a four mandibled mouth pointing a plasma rifle towards them. Sneg also changed the display to show a holographic depiction of one.

Mroz pointed with the ruler towards it, "This everyone is a Sangheili or an Elite in our military reporting system. They're the only one of the races mentioned here that the UEG has has discovered their home region and the UNSC has fought there." He put the remote down and used his off hand to rub the scar over his eye, a reminder of his time during the Sangheilios Campaign. "They're a very martial culture, but also a very divided one. Their main group is friendly and allied with the UEG, but they have countless splinter and rogue groups who have proved remarkably hostile and tenacious. They each are about as strong as an unarmored Spartan as a baseline average and can often be as strong as a fully armored one or greater. They're naturally very tough as almost all of their organs are redundant meaning that they can survive extreme trauma injuries with little impact on their ability to fight."

Sneg looked up from her tablet to add something, "Aim for the head. They only have one brain." As she made a motion of aiming a pistol at the hologram.

"Thank you Sneg." Mroz said before returning to the briefing, "They have a few more exploitable positions for both melee and ranged weapons though I advise against attacking them up close unless you can attack them by surprise or are fast enough to keep up with them. They possess superhuman agility due to the robust muscle structure of those double jointed legs and have marginally faster reflexes than a normal human."

The two on screen and those in the room nodded at that as they began developing contingencies for how to fight these things. Dallas took the stage next as Mroz moved to sit down. As they had done with the previous examples, he was going to explain their equipment. "As with all other examples we have shown, they mostly used ranged Plasma weapons as their go to weaponry. These things will kill you very easily if you try to take shots. They best solution is stay on the move. They have a very low muzzle velocity that can make them easy to dodge or evade and give them very limited range. If you need to try to attack them in hand to hand, don't try to close the distance, stay in cover and let them come to you. As usual, I still advise you to get some body armor on, ideally with ceramic in them, it won't save you from direct hits, but it'll make you less vulnerable to plasma splash and thermal radiation. Arts protection may also help, though I'm not fully sure if it will."

Standing up, Dallas walked over to the projector and pointed at the armored suit the creature was wearing. "This is a pretty typical example of a combat harness. Standard armor they wear. It's made out of a composite material called nanolaminate plate. It's various molecule thick sheets of metal atomically welded together. It's lightweight and good at protecting from energy but kinetics are something its bad at dealing with. Use that to your advantage." He then pointed to the air around the creature as Sneg made a holographic bullet appear which flew at the display before being stopped by a barrier, "The main defense of them though is this, energy shields. Like what Mroz and Sneg have in their armor, they're normally inert barriers of high energy plasma that provide protection from both directed energy and kinetic attacks. As those two have reported, they can block Arts, but they are rapidly drained by them. Use Arts, melee attacks (they're bad at taking those for some reason), and if possible, use their own weapons against them. Plasma is good at draining shields."

Looking at the screen, everyone noticed both doctors taking in the information and noting it down. The Doctor looked like he was about to say something when all of a sudden, the screen went black. Everyone tried to figure out what was happening when one of the base's communications techs entered the room to report.

"Ma'am,..." He reported to Amiya, "We just completely lost our connection on our wireless coms. It's not on our end, we think its from the local radio relay station."

Amiya looked to the Spartans and Mroz was the first to speak, "Ma'am, communications infrastructure is normally one of the first targets that these groups attack. We're going to need to get to that station, verify the situation, and bring it back online by any means necessary."

Amiya nodded at that and looked at him, "Mroz, put together a team. You're going to lead this mission to the relay and leave a space on the team. I'm going to be coming too."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: Time for Rhodes Island's first contact with the Covenant next time. Sorry about the lack of an update yesterday. I was busy with family.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

Undisclosed Date
Undisclosed Time
Undisclosed Location
Terra

No matter how much countless other organizations on Terra like to claim such, one always would eclipse them. The Organization for Navigational Integration would always be the most powerful on Terra. Despite their harmless sounding name, they used their front as a Navigation and Resource Extraction company as a cover up for their true mission, the protection of the planet form the countless Forerunner and other artifacts buried in it. For that, they relied on skills form their previous organization (also using the same acronym), a large stockpile of salvaged and replicated UNSC nuclear warheads, and the resources of nearly 2 centuries of operation to accomplish their goals by any means necessary on missions directed and spearheaded by their countless operatives and black ops teams.

While their resources paled in comparison with that of their original organization, having a large arsenal of weaponry capable of reducing the greatest Mobile Cities to slag in milliseconds and the activation protocols for even more dangerous ancient tools made them far outstrip any organization on Terra or at least it would have if it wasn't for a new variable entering the scenario.

The Central Committee was in the middle of fierce debate at the moment on the nature of what their current response should be. A few months ago, what they previously knew as Slip Space Ruptures were detected across the planet and in low orbit and disgorged countless entities that complicate everything.

With the usual vocal scrambler activated, No. 5 began, "UNSCRI001-S148 confirmed to me and my compatriot today that we are dealing with Hostile Group Charlie-Oscar-Victor-01. If reports from our members about their previous interactions are correct, they will begin excavation and attempt activation of any nearby sites they land near. I recommend immediate deployment of assets to contain or neutralize the threat."

No. 1 sighed at that, "5, I thought you said that you wanted ONI to remain out of your Operation with R001 and B101. By the way, how is B101, it's been a while since we got a report about our previous No. 3." 1 was always the only one who never used a vocal scrambler making the tone of his raspy and deep male voice even more apparent. In her very long time with the Organization, she had never heard the voice change.

"It's simple, there hasn't been much to report on B101. He has recovered no memories and this still presents no issue to our operations. If need be, I have contingencies for either a reintroduction or elimination of him depending on how it develops. For the other part, we need an immediate response to this issue before it escalates from a regional level threat to a national or planetary threat and we have no way of containing the issue." 5 reported with frankness in her voice.

"Alright,..." 1 responded, "Unfortunate that we may have to eliminate a man who was formally one of our best assets so I hope we won't have to." There was recognition and maybe some nostalgia in 1's voice like an old friend remembering better days. "In the mean time, keep that team ready and have them deal with the situation. I'll let you know when we can send Operative Son to clean this mess up and you can get them out. Right now, she's dealing with that mess in Ursus. 1 out."

With that, 5 logged out of the meeting and closed her laptop. Why could nothing be simple here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9 Jan. 2556
1505 Hours
Rhodes Island MRAP
Kazimierz

In the lead of the team's convoy, Spartan Mroz-148 sat in the driver's seat of one of the team's MRAPs.

Dallas had modified them by adding explosive reactive armor and several layers of ceramic plate to provide some protection against plasma weapons. He hopped that it wouldn't be needed and that they could maneuver around any Covies that tried to stop them or simply avoid hostiles all together out here, but he knew that that was highly unlikely. These winding forest roads and the heavy fog that had rolled in recently limited visibility and forced them to take things slow. On the plus side though, it made things far too tight for any vehicles they may have to maneuver close to them. It was going to be interesting if anything did happen and would require the best drivers on the team, as such Mroz was driving the lead vehicle with Texas in the follow up vehicle. In the vehicle with him was Sneg who was standing up through the gunner hatch with her SRS99. Amiya was sitting next to him in the passenger seat, Blaze was occupying the seat directly behind the Cautus and Dallas had roped them into using their last seat as storage for one of those three turrets he had built and brought with them. They were going with a small team on this. They would need to move fast and hit hard for this plan to work.

Mroz simply sat in the seat keeping the vehicle on course as he kept scanning the tree line and his motion tracker for any potential ambushes. It was quiet and that was getting to peoples' nerves. He noticed that both Amiya and Blaze looked visibly uncomfortable at this, they were obviously used to a straight fight, not long stints through a battlefield. They'd probably make good ODSTs then, go in feet first, finish the mission and get airlifted out within the hour. Anyway, he put his mind back to listening to the noise of the engine and tires. The near complete silence though was broken when Blaze asked something, "Mroz, you talked a lot about UNSC military protocol back there about how to flight these things and it got me thinking, what exactly is the UNSC?"

Mroz would freely admit something, he was very bored right now from all the driving and the lack of anything to do so he would answer the question as just something to do to keep his mind busy as he let his battlefield instincts guide his body. Him and Sneg had prepared a half truth explanation for everything when they had first arrived at Rhodes Island. Like their briefing on the Ex-Covenant, it had all references to Space removed, but it would be good enough. "Well, the UNSC or the United Nations' Security Council, is the military branch of the United Earth Government responsible for the security of Earth and all her Colonies from any internal or external threats." He technically wasn't lying. The UNSC was originally the United Nations' Security Council before it was given the mission of orbital supremacy during the First Interplanetary War.

"That makes sense,..." Blaze began while gesturing at the Navy insignia on his shoulder puldron, "You mentioned that it has multiple branches and that you're part of the Navy, mind explaining?" Call it a bit of inheritance from her father, but she always had a fascination with military science. Probably the only reason she didn't end up joining the Victorian Army was that they disallow infected in it, though she probably dodged a bullet there by ending up at Rhodes Island.

"Alright Blaze, the UNSC is divided into two major departments, Department of the Navy which contains the Navy and Marine Corps, and the Department of the Army which contains both the Army and Air Force." He took a hand off the stick-shift and put it to his chest plate, "As we've established, I'm Navy. The UNSC Navy is in charge of all fleet operations and maintains and operates all naval based aerospace assets. Due to the nature of where we fight, we're the most powerful branch. Sneg and most other Spartan-IIIs were part of the UNSC Army. They're in charge of long term groundside campaigns, defensive, occupational, and counter-insurgency operations. They're also the Navy's main rival so..."

Amiya knew he was omitting a lot, but just nodded along with it to go along with it. "What about the other two branches and why does the Navy have its own Special Operations when they have command of the Marine Corps too?"

"Good question,..." Mroz said as he kept his eye his eye on a shape that darted though the fog, it almost went to combat alert before he identified it as a deer. "The UNSC Navy has its own SpecOps units because they're technically under the direct control of the Office of Naval Intelligence which is technically a branch of the Navy that maintains stealth ships and aircraft but its complicated. As for the other two branches, the Marine Corps handles short term land campaigns and expeditionary warfare. They also handle security aboard Navy ships. The Air Force does exactly what it says they do on the label. They maintain and operate land based aerospace assets and provide support for the other branches by securing air superiority and providing close air support, logistical support, and medical support via their CASEVAC services." He took his hand off the stick again to gesture with it, "Now, ideally all the branches work together to complete the mission which we normally do though there is of course the rivalries," he pumped his fist, "Go Navy by the way."

That earned a chuckle from the other two as Sneg cursed at him annoyed and the cabin eventually returned to being quiet as they continued to roll.

It was a few miles on from that when Sneg called out on the team radio. "All units halt, I'm seeing something on the road." They continued to drive until Mroz jammed on the brake upon seeing it. It was a burning latus work of logs sitting across the road, blocking their path.

"What the hell,..." Mroz said as he looked out over the obstacle. From the burn on the wood, it looked new like it was only built within the hour. He got on the radio with the rest of the team, "Dallas, dismount and take a look at that. Sneg and Exusiai, keep an eye out. If anything tries to make a move on him, put some rounds in them." A chorus of confirmations rang out as the eldest Spartan climbed out of his vehicle behind him. He didn't have any of the drivers do it so they could quickly move out if something happened. First mistake was to leave a vehicle immobile in an ambush.

Dallas walked up slowly with his MA5B out and scanning the area with his rifle. He came up to the simmering pile and took a closer look where he made an unsettling discovery. "Dallas to Actual, this thing is a crematorium. I'm seeing multiple skeletons in here. Human and otherwise and some of the otherwise look infected." That shocked everyone a bit. What the hell were they doing around Originium. The only deposits here were hundreds of meters below their feet. Were they digging?

Dallas leaned in closer to see if he could make out anything more when out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a bright light light out of the corner of his eye and within moments realized what it was and threw himself down behind the wood to avoid a bright beam of high velocity particles that was fired a split second too late. The beam's timing was just bad enough to turn what would have been a kill shot against the chest into a glancing hit to the shoulder, failing to penetrate the armor and just leaving a glowing mark of superheated titanium. Sneg provided a response milliseconds later when the loud report of her rifle rang out and the avian creature who tried to shoot Dallas fell down out of its tree nearly cut in half by the fist sized hole in its torso. "Fucking Sniper Jackal." Dallas said into coms as he slowly raised his head to see if there was anything else.

It was then though that things really kicked off as everyone observed plasma bolts flying into the clearing from all angles the two snipers began firing at anywhere they saw the bolts coming from as Mroz yelled into his radio, "Move, Move, Move! We've got to get out of here! Follow me!" He slammed on the accelerator and swerved to the right of the crematory box slightly off the road at high speed. Dallas saw this and sprinted up to the vehicle in motion and jumped up, grabbing on with his right hand to the hand rails along the roof and magnetizing his right boot to the craft, blazing away with his MA5B held in his left hand. Sneg meanwhile was emptying her sniper rifle into targets in the fog, bringing down targets with single rounds to heads and bodies and downing them as such.

Both MRAPs rolled as fast as they could over the rough terrain. Mroz tried to run over an Elite however it managed to jump up and grab onto the hood of the car. Everyone in the vehicle went wide eyed at that as Mroz tried to throw the target off through sharp maneuvers but failed as the alien punched the windshield several times and broke through the window. Sneg and Dallas didn't have shots on the alien leading to Mroz to try to reach for his magnum and Blaze trying to bring up her chainsaw to stab it with the extension module all the while the creature practically placed the muzzle of its plasma rifle against his helmetless face, he thought he wouldn't need it in a vehicle.

The solution came though not from any of the normal warriors, but from the ring covered hand of the young woman next to Mroz who used her Arts to send a ball of black energy straight into its chest, sending it flying from the hood of the MRAP and popping its shield. Giving her a respectful and thankful nod, Mroz turned the vehicle back onto the road and incidentally driving right over the downed Elite before turning back onto the road. Said Elite tried to get back to his fleet before he was splattered on the grill and bumper of Texas's MRAP before his body was thrown over the vehicle and shot a few times by Exusiai just to be sure.

Looking at his daughter's handy work, Dallas whispered to himself, "Now that's my girl." As the two vehicles sped off into the distance towards their objective.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: Conspiracies are fun and yes, other stuff from the UNSC and UEG has arrived here basically since humanity has began space traveling. I also wanted to do some world building since the UNSC is structured a little differently in this AU.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.

 

[FastConcentrate8]

9 Jan. 2556
1610 Hours
Relay Station R4
Kazimierz

Finally arriving at their destination, Spartan Alex-148 brought the MRAP to a halt outside of the facility that was their objective and it was just as they expected.

The place was burning and looked abandoned.

Mroz stopped the engine and placed the helmet which was sitting between him and Amiya on as him and everyone else was moving to get out. Dallas hopped off of the side of the vehicle, Sneg vaulted out of her hatch and pulled her rifle out of the mount she had it on, Amiya and Blaze both exited through their doors normally and all formed a perimeter around the vehicle for a second ensuring that no one was out here before standing up and forming up on the passenger side of the vehicle. Texas and Exusiai joined up after parking their vehicle and taking a quick moment to survey the new Sangheili shaped dent in the front of their vehicle.

Looking at the purpleish-blue smear on the vehicle, Texas looked to her father and asked, "Does that stuff come off?"

He shrugged in his armor, "Yeah, it'll just take a lot."

The group then continued their look before deciding that it was clear to move over to the station. The building was a sizable white structure with a sign showing the name of a local subsidiary of the Rose Papers Union. The walls showed burns and pot-marks in them like those associated with the enemy's weapons. Just like in the Reunion camp, there were several bodies scattered around the area mostly civilians who were gunned down and/or executed. It was an unsettling sight for those unaccustomed to seeing the aftermath of a Covenant attack.

Mroz taking point and the other two Spartans forming the outside of their delta formation as they quickly made their way through the courtyard towards the entrance. They stacked up on the front doors and Mroz peaked in through the broken glass and saw the room empty. With a hand signal, the stack entered the room and fanned out to cover the area and sweeping everywhere they could spot with their view and weapons up.

Amiya began to move only to stumble over another dead body that didn't look much older than her. To everyone else, it looked like she had to struggle a bit to keep her lunch down though she did her best to keep on her brave face for her companions. Blaze was disgusted though used to this sort of thing due to her long times spent on the battlefield. Exusiai was uncomfortable and was handling it a lot worse than Amiya though she was still on her toes and could be trusted to remain so. The three Spartans were unfortunately all too familiar with this sight and Texas had seen (and done) worse during her time with her extended family.

The group continued their movement through the building, constantly on the lookout for any remaining enemy forces. The Spartans had briefed them with the fact that they use active camouflage very often so they absolutely didn't want an enemy sneaking up to them. Their objective was to get to the tech center and assess what had happened.

With the lights out in most of the building, they were forced to navigate by the few light sources they had down the dark hallways. The shadows mixing with the red emergency lights lent to whole facility the same eerie feeling that is evoked by a good horror movie. The quiet too added to the ambience and added to everyone's guard instincts.

Eventually, the group came up to a door in the utility section labeled broadcasting control and equipment and they stacked up on it. Mroz took point in the stack and looked across to the fireteam on the other side of the door and at Sneg. "Sneg, fiberoptic now."

She nodded and stuck the monofilament looking devise under the door frame and surveyed the footage on her Mk. V helmet's HUD. "Looks clear. No contacts from what I can see and a lot of servers and control equipment." She withdrew from the entryway and returned to her position in the stack behind Dallas.

"Alright, this is the target." He looked over the other shoulder towards the team behind him and got the thumbs up from the Operators behind him and he nodded in return. "Breeching." He kicked the door and sent it flying almost off its hinges as the team filed into the room, Spartans first. Checking with flashlights and weapons raised, they saw the room empty with just the emergency lights on.

From what it looked like, there was the control room for the station's equipment and thus had the control consoles. The group approached and fanned out with Dallas and Texas eventually finding the main power box for the entire station which had been deactivated via the surge protector. Flipping the switch to initiate a reset, most of the lights in the room turned back on and several screens flashed back on. Behind said screens was a window that overlooked the large amount of equipment that handled the inbound and outbound communications traffic and serving as the local internet hub.

Walking down to the system, Dallas and Sneg got to work examining the equipment as the rest of the group and even to the non-technically minded among them, they could tell that things were bad. "Well,..." Dallas began, "This system doesn't look too good and I'm sure you can see that as well." He gestured to the large slash into the machine that looked half like a cut and half like a melt into the material. The circuitry even looked singed and burned when it wasn't sparking in several spots. "We're going to have to do some major jury-rigging to get this working again and..." The elder Spartan paused and his helmeted head went stock still for a second, "Hey Mroz and Sneg, are your motion trackers being weird too?"

Looking down at his, Mroz noticed it too. His motion tracker was covered in yellow and red hazes that would blurr when he moved his vector almost like a smear. It was odd. "Yeah, I'm seeing that too." Considering Sneg's nodding at things too, she was seeing this too. Something was up, were they being jammed?

The others looked like they were noticing things too, Exusiai looked at a door on a far end of the room and said to the others, "I swear that door just moved, did anyone else see that?" Several other looked, but seeing it was an emergency exit door that was open when they arrived she was the only one that noticed at first.

If the twitching in Blaze, Amiya, and Texas's ears were anything then they were hearing something too. Texas was the last to report something after taking a few whiffs of the air, "Does anybody else smell tar?"

Dallas took note of his daughter's report. He knew from his time with Elvira that Lupo had extremely powerful senses of smell, almost as good as those of a normal wolf. While his daughter's sense of smell had been damaged by her... unhealthy habit, it was still significantly stronger than the average Human or Terran and he could think of something obvious that smelled like tar. He turned around and spotted what he was looking for and in a flash of movement he grabbed one of his two magnums, brought it to level, and pulled the trigger. Everyone reacted to the bang of the heavy pistol and saw a black armored Elite fall over dead with its active camo deactivating and its purple blood shooting out of a hole right through its eyepiece. All hell then broke loose.

First was an elite in ornate white armor dropped down right near where Mroz and Amiya were and slashed at the two of them with what Mroz knew as an Energy Sword. With the speed it attacked, it was only Mroz's superhuman reaction time and grab of Amiya that saved the young woman from being cut in half though it did take some of her hair though. It tried to slash again but now with his superior out of the way, Mroz landed a snap kick to the center of the thing's torso which sent it sprawling to the ground.

Several other formerly cloaked enemies also tried to sprint and/or drop in. Sneg smashed a Grunt's head in with the but of her DMR before popping several charging Jackals in the heads. Dallas grabbed his shotgun and rapidly unloaded 4 rounds into two Elites popping both of their shields and dropping them. Another Elite tried charging the two Operators from Penguin Logistics. Exusiai unloaded most of the magazine from the M4 style rifle and let the arts in her ammo deal with the target's shields allowing her partner Texas to send its head flying off with one of her swords and a good swing to the neck. One with support of two Jackals tried charging to attack Blaze, but some quick Arts support from Amiya popped its shield and allowed Blaze to kill it was a stab to the chest with her chainsaw, splattering the alien's blood everywhere before moving on to its escorts which were ended quickly by the woman with Sangheili blood boiling off of her.

This left the white armored Elite and only a few other left as the last aliens in the room. Mroz tried to run over to attack it while it was on the ground, but was stopped when it pulled his maneuver on him by sending him to the ground with a powerful kick as well. With the reprieve, it scrambled to its feet and joined up with its comrades and sprinted down a hallway off to the side. Seeing this, the three Spartans bolted up and moved on a pursuit path with only Mroz yelling back to them, "Stay here! We'll deal with this."

Before any of the Operators could react, they heard a series of rapid bangs and bright flashes from down the hall from muzzle flash and explosives before a series of loud groaning and meaty impact noises were heard. One of the walls then burst open with Mroz on top of the white armored creature's back and stabbing it with his machete right into the base of the neck before it could do anything other than raise his head one last time. Standing up, he flicked the blood off of the blade and returned it to its position on his back.

"Mission accomplished,..." He said to everyone, "Alright, you two get back to work on the equipment and the rest of you help me with these bodies."
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Two Hours Later

"Alright, that should work." Dallas said to himself as he withdrew his hands from the machine and Sneg finalized something on her tacpad.

The others looked up from their various tasks of dealing with the bodies. "Do we have a secure line again?" Amiya asked while standing up from next to Mroz as he inspected the body of the Elite he called an Ultra. She walked over to the two tech experts to continue the discussion.

"Yeah, we should." Sneg reported looking up from her tacpad and taking her helmet off. "I won't bore you with how we got this stuff working again, but everything should be functioning now."

Amiya looked relived at that, "That's great. Can you open a com line with Rhodes Island then. We didn't get the Doctor or Kal'tsit's orders earlier so we should probably check back in with them."

"Alright,..." Sneg looked back down to her tacpad and pushed a few things on screen before looking back up to her and tossing her the devise. "There you go, tell them I said hi." She walked away at that and smiled as she did.

Amiya caught the military grade computer and looked down at it and saw the Rhodes Island emblem on it with what looked like a ringer underneath it with a pulsing message saying Calling appearing every few seconds before a very upset looking Kal'tsit appeared on the screen that looked surprised when she saw Amiya, "Ahh, Amiya. Can you do me a favor next time you speak with her and tell Sneg that PRTS is angry at her constant intrusion attempts. She could have just called me instead of hacking the system to automatically direct this call to me."

Amiya heard the Spartan-III laughing when she heard that but ignored it and continued to look at her superior, "Dr. Kal'tsit, we're calling in to report our current situation is continuing but we have restored local communications and made first contact with the enemy."

"Alright,..." Kal'tsit acknowledged and looked down before looking Amiya in the eye again, "Amiya, your mission has changed. Reunion is no longer your objective. I've gotten into contact with some allies who will deal with this crisis, but it will take them time to get there. In the mean time, you are to do anything in your power to cause trouble for these Ex-Covenant as the briefing has called them. Once my allies arrive, they will extract you and return you to the Landship. Do you understand me?"

"Yes Ma'am." Amiya answered before continuing the call.

Meanwhile on the other end of the room, Blaze took notice that Mroz wasn't putting the body of the white armored Elite into the pile and was instead taking a keen interest in studying it and going through its armor. She walked over and asked him, "Hey, what're you doing there?"

He looked up with his helmet now off and continued his search of the body, "Oh, this guy was the highest ranked one here. I'm betting that he has something that can help us on him."

"Hmm,..." Blaze hummed to herself as she watched him work, "How can you tell?"

"Simple,..." He began, "Armor and color." He stopped his searched for a second and sat up in a crouch next to where she sat down. "Sangheili color-code their armor by rank. That purpleish-blue armor is for Minors, the lowest rank they have. Red is for Majors who are their NCOs. White is for Ultras who are their field officers. Orange and Gold are for Zealots and Generals. There's a lot more to it and it often varies by group, though that's the general rule of thumb."

"Sounds like you know a lot about them then." Blaze told him with a smile.

"Well, you can say that. Back when I was on SILVER Team with Dallas, we spent about a year and a half fighting both along side and against them when intervening in their Civil War. Learned a lot about them and their culture there." He responded while getting back to work.

"Sounds like an interesting story or stories then. You should tell them when we get somewhere safe." Blaze got back up and gave him a nod which he returned as she continued watch him work. He flipped the body over and saw a small pouch on the side of the armor. Checking it, he smiled when he saw its content.

"Jackpot." He said to no one in particular as he pulled out what looked like an alien equivalent to a tablet or tacpad. He placed it on the ground next to him and continued his search by reaching for the helmet and pulling out his knife. Slashing some of the restraints, he pulled it off and checked the inside and smiled to himself as he found something near where the thing's ear would have been and pulled a pill shaped purple thing from the helmet that looked to have an antenna sticking out of it. He also gave the head a once over before looking back to Blaze, "Hey Blaze, check that thing's neck. What does that look like to you?"

The feline crouched next to the Spartan and looked, after overcoming the initial shock of looking a real life alien in the face, she recovered and focused on the neck and saw what he meant on the left side of the thing's neck, "Is that, Oripathy crystallization?"

"I think so." He told her as he looked her in the face before standing up to walk over to his partner. "Hey Sneg, I got a datapad and a HUL off the body. We should probably give them a look back at base."
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AN: Sorry for a lack of an update yesterday. Didn't really have the creative juices flowing. I may slow down my rate of writing going forward.

As usual, feel free to comment anything you have to say.

Until next time.