Chapter One

October 20, 2552 (Military Calendar) /

Nexus, Auragis System

Nexus was a very desolate planet, no bigger then the size of Pluto. It was the back water planet of the Inner Colonies, and it had good reason to be. It was pretty much 90% desert, with only a small ocean and an even smaller forest area. The planets reminded many people of an old western town you would see in movies hundreds of years ago; the type where an outlaw would come into town and wreck havoc among the townsfolk, then some lone cowboy would come in and defeat the outlaw. Nexus was almost like that with multiple small towns strewn out over the entire planet, and many escaped convicts, and yet to be captured criminals hid here. If you wanted to hide somewhere and not be found for a very long time, then Nexus was the place to go.

When the Covenant set their sights on Nexus as their next target, many people questioned was their even a need to send a UNSC force to try to defend the planet. Many people (mainly rich people from the richer inner colonies) even pointed out that by letting the Covenant glass the planet, they would be doing the humanity a favor by getting rid of some of the galaxies most feared criminals and outlaws. But they forget to remember that their were still innocents on Nexus. Minus the couple thousand of outlaws and criminals, Nexus had a civilian population of about twenty thousand strewn throughout the desolate planet.

So the UNSC had to send some protection for them. That came in the form of two UNSC Frigates, the Barack Obama and the Marlow. The Obama had the battle groups marine contingent consisting of about a battalions worth of troops. It also carried the majority of the marines support weapons, the heavy artillery, tanks, and dropships. The Marlow carried the task forces elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, ODST for short. These were the UNSC's elite shock troopers who had a special way of entering the fray. They went feet first in their HEV pods, and would land literally on top of an enemy position and engage almost instantly. This mode of transportation is however dangerous with a high possibility of your pod failing and the unlucky trooper plummeting to the planet to his/her death. That's how the ODST got their nickname Helljumpers, because they were literally dropping into hell on some of their engagements.

On this particular engagement though, the Helljumpers had gone down to Nexus in Pelican Dropships, as the Covenant had not yet arrived to the planet they were still on the other side of the system. The marines on the ground quickly set up defenses around the major towns and cities, and waited for the covenants inevitable attack.

The attack came a few days later in the form of three Covenant CCS-class Battlecruiser. The ships rolled on into orbit around Nexus and engaged the two frigates. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned the Obama and the Marlow led by Captain Morgan, a veteran and survivor of the Reach campaign, were able to destroy one and cripple another ship by using a combination of Archer missiles, the ships MAC gun, and using Nexus's orbit as a way to slingshot themselves around and take the Covenant taskforce by surprise. Despite this rare win in space, the Obama had been severely crippled and the last remaining Covenant cruiser had been able to get into Nexus's atmosphere and unloaded it's troops and equipment into the Valhalla Desert, the area with the most populated city, Rio with a population of 3,000. So for two days the covenants has been pressing on the city but have been being repulsed by the marines stationed around there. Somewhere up the line in rank someone decided that the UNSC needed to counter attack, and that the Helljumpers were the perfect candidate for that job. So the ODST have been hitting the covenant where it hurts, in commando style raids, blowing up fuel depots, hitting supply lines, and knocking out anti- air weapons. These attacks delayed the Covenant but they would still press hard with there superior numbers and technology. It was only a matter of time before they completely defeated the marines, but marines never gave up and they kept on fighting despite the odds.

Seven miles west of Rio, two ODST lay motionless on a hill overlooking the vast desert. It wasn't much of a hill though just a rocky outcropping with slight underbrush and a few dead trees sticking out of the sweltering rocks. Private first class Ricky Li lay as still as a statue, at first glance you would of thought he was dead, but he wasn't, he had just been thoroughly trained in sniper school and taught how to relax your muscles to the point of total stillness. His partner wasn't as graceful and quiet. Corporal Jacen Cole turned in his sleep, and slowly recoiled back into his fetal position. Ricky smiled as he watched his team mate cradle his BR55HB SR Battle Rifle like it was a teddy bear.

Ricky was surprised at how easily his friend had fallen asleep when they had set up this post not an hour before. In the distance, he could hear the sound of plasma bombardments, probably on marines' positions near Rio, answered by the constant thump thump thump of UNSC heavy artillery shooting back at potential targets. One had to wonder how anyone could fall asleep with noise like that going off, but most UNSC personnel knew that most infantry men learned to fall asleep with the noise after their first engagement.

While Jacen snored on Ricky peered trough his scope again, looking at their target, a black rectangular one story building, that the team suspected was a Covenant weapons cache. Ricky relaxed and pulled his opaque visor away from the scope. A dragonfly had landed on the top of the scope. He smiled and put out his index finger, the dragonfly crawled off the scope onto his finger. The sniper slowly pulled back his hand until the insect was at eye level with him. Seeing things like this reminded him of his home country of China back on Earth. It had been so long since he's seen it.

Suddenly the dragonfly flew away. Ricky watched its flight until it was out of sight. He then noticed movement at the entrance to the building. Two red armored Elites stood at the entrance conversing. The eight foot tall split jawed monsters were the higher ranked of the Covenant military. They led the lowly grunts and the shield using jackals.

Ricky nudged his partner, "Yo Jace, we got contacts."

Jacen Cole awoke suddenly rolling from his back onto his stomach, using his elbows he perched himself up and viewed through his BR's scope, "hhmm split jaws eh?"

"Yup," Ricky replied, as he keyed squad comm., "Sergeant Fenix, this is PFC Li here, I got two tangos down at the target building, what are your orders?"

There was a couple second pause then came the gruff voice of there CO Sergeant Fenix, "Li you have the green light to engage targets, we will move in on your go."

"Yessir," Ricky retorted back, he made an adjustment on his scope, before going into what he liked to call his "sniper trance." He would enter a state where it was just him, his sniper and his targets.

"Wind 3.8 miles southwest, mark velocity 7.8 kilometers per an hour," he said to Jace, though Jace had little to no clue what he was talking about. Jacen was filling in as Ricky's temporary spotter. They had lost their other spotter a day before; it had hit the whole team hard.

"Taking the shot," Ricky said slowly pulling back the trigger. BOOM! Despite his SRS99D-S2 AM being silenced, the sniper rifle still was pretty loud. Jace watched as the Elites head on the right disappeared in a cloud of purple mist, before he could even blink again the other elite was thrown back into the wall of the building, courtesy of a round through the body.

"Alright team, targets are neutralized, you have the green light on infiltration."

About a hundred yards ahead of them, about fifty yards from the target building, three black figures came out from under their tan colored tarps, making it seem as if they had risen out of the sand, and approached the building.

"Squad stack up," Sergeant Fenix ordered, as the ODST stacked up on the left side of the door. Alex Lombardi, the teams demo man, gave a hard kick to the headless Elite before setting an explosive charge on the door and stacking up with the rest of the team.. "On one we go," Barked Fenix as he pulled the stock back on his MA5C Assault Rifle.

"Three."

"Two."

"One, go go!" the explosive charge detonated sending the door crumbling inward, the Helljumpers filed through. Over the comm. Jace and Ricky could hear the sounds of gunfire and the squeals and shrieks of startled Grunts. The whole thing must've lasted only ten seconds.

"Room clear!" Lombardi yelled, "And take a look at this sir."

"Jackpot," said Fenix in a surprisingly happy voice, he keyed the comm. "Cole, Li looks like ONI was right for once on their Intel. This place is packed from wall to wall with Covenant weapons, needlers, plasma rifles, plasma pistols and even a couple fuel rod guns."

"Nice to know the spooks didn't fuck up this time," said Jace to Ricky, but Ricky wasn't listening; he was eyeing an approaching dust cloud from the east. "Ugh sir, we got a problem."

That problem was in the form of a Malevolent. The Malevolent was the purple upgraded version of the Shadow transport. It could carry up to a dozen passengers plus two crew members. It was armed with an over the top plasma turret.

The Malevolent slowed outside the weapons cache, "Sergeant Fenix we got a covenant troop transport outside," Ricky reported in.

"Roger we will dig in a hold out, reinforcements are en route," Replied Fenix.

The back ramp of the Malevolent dropped too the ground and out came about a dozen grunts came out the back armed with plasma pistols. Out of the drivers seat came two elites, another red armored one and a golden armored Zealot. At the sight of their two dead comrades the Zealot ordered the major elite to take half the grunts and retake the facility while it kept guard here with the rest.

Ricky took the first shot, hitting the Zealot right in the chest, nothing. Jace followed suit putting a burst in the golden armored elites head. The Zealots head snapped back by the force of the impact and its shields flared and dissipated. The Elite hit the dirt and rolled out of Jace's line of fire. He swore and got out of his prone position and into a crouching position.

"You take out split lip, ill handle the smaller guys," Jacen said peering through the scope of his BR55. He began firing in three round burst at the grunts, who in turn ducked and ran for cover behind the Malevolent. A few got of a couple shots from their plasma pistol but the majority were dead. The Zealot popped its head up and fired a shot from its carbine. The green bolt sizzled and burned though a dead tree near Jace's head causing him to duck for cover. Ricky returned fire, but the shot bounced of the purple armor of the Malevolent.

There was a lull in the fighting for a few moments before, a grunt came from behind the armor carrier wielding two shiny blue spheres, it was making a beeline straight for their position. "Shit he's got plasma grenades!" Jace yelled getting back up. He sighted on the grunt, and before it could get a hundred yards he put a burst right into its head, the plasma grenades fell next to it, and detonated. Igniting the grunts methane tank and causing it to vaporize into nothing.

The Elite had sent the grunt out as a distraction while it mounted the malevolent turret and fired towards the rocky outcropping. Blue plasma washed all over the rocks and trees, Jace ducked back down to avoid it. Ricky however didn't move an inch. He went into his sniper trance again, and fired. The shell went straight and true leaving a white vapor trail in its wake. The shells hit the Malevolents armor, ricochet off of it and hit the Zealot in the head sending it rag dolling into the air and landing with a thump in the sand.

Jace was in complete shock, he looked over to Ricky, who he knew had to be smiling under that visor, and asked, "How the hell do you pull shit like that off?" Ricky shrugged and replied, "Lucky shot, I guess."

"PFF lucky shot my ass, you know you could at least admit you actually do this stuff on purpose," Ricky just chuckled.

"Sergeant Fenix targets are neutralized out here," Jace reported in. After a few gunshots Fenix said, "It's all clear here too, though Torres took a burn to the shoulder armor." In the back ground he heard PFC Torres say, "I'm ok Jace just a lil burn that's all."

"Cole and Li, report to our position while we wait for pickup," ordered Fenix.

"Yessir," The two Helljumpers barked in unison. They began the walk to the building a few hundred yards away. As they approached they saw that the rest of their squad was waiting outside. Sergeant Fenix had his helmet off and was leaning against the wall of the building.

Sergeant Carter Fenix looked like one of those marines you would see in recruitment posters. He had close cropped brown hair, a chiseled face with a scar running from under his right eye to his mouth, courtesy of a elites energy sword during the Reach campaign.

"Glad to see you boys made it, nice work out here" Fenix said nodding over to the dead grunts and elites.

"You know sir short work makes good work," Said Ricky smugly.

"Hmm that's easy for you to say, being hundreds of yards from your target while others are only a few yards from there's'," said Lombardi, Lombardi was the short tempered one of the squad, something an explosives expert shouldn't, but he was pretty damn good at his job and he would cover your ass any day.

"Take it easy Lombardi, you lug, Ricky there does just as good of a job as we do at close range," said Ellie Torres in a soothing voice. Ellie had a knack of always getting the guys in the squad to stop bickering, which they did a lot, so much that the guys referred to her as "mom", much to her chagrin.

A shadow enveloped the group and they looked up to see two D77H-TCI, or more commonly known as Pelicans, hover over them and slowly descend into a landing.

The Helljumpers moved out of the way as sand was kicked up in every direction. One of the Pelicans had an extra troop transport in the back. The other landed and out came about a dozen ODST. One in particular had the two silver bars of a Marine Captain.

"Captain Van Zandt, welcome to the suck," said Sergeant Fenix shaking the Captains hand. Van Zandt was another "perfect" marine. He was also one of the oldest any of them had ever seen to actually lead his troops at the front.

"Very good, on getting this weapons cache sergeant, I can tell by the dead covvie bastards that you did a number here," Van Zandt said with a smile, one of the rare times he does smile.

"It was no issue at all sir and we found the Covenants weapons and they are all ready nice and stacked and ready to go," Fenix gruffly said.

The captain tussled with his close crop gray hair and said, "Well that's good, we will just load these weapons up and head back to the Marlow."

"What!" the entire squad said in unison.

"Command has ordered that the entire ground force to be evacuated along with any remaining civilians, we are just gonna nuke the damn place" Van Zandt said with a hint of anger in his voice.

It was Sergeant Fenix that responded, "But sir, we were just making head way with this counter attack and we already lost so many good men, why leave now when we got the Covenant on the ropes."

Van Zandt looked Fenix directly in the eye, "Because Earth is under attack."

There was a good few seconds of silence before Fenix asked, "How did they find it?"

The captain shook his head, "I don't know, a fleet of about thirteen ships appeared a few hours ago, the home fleet engaged them and were able to destroy a few of them but a Assault Carrier slipped by them and landed in New Mombassa. Captain Morgan has ordered the withdrawal of all UNSC ground personnel, we are to report to the Marlow by 0100 hours from now, from there we are linking up with the 8th Fleet and we are heading to Earth, boys and girls this is gonna be one of the biggest fights since Reach and a lot of us aren't gonna make it, but we are Helljumpers and we can take it and we can dish it out!"

With that the surrounding Helljumpers let out an Orahh! And boarded the Pelicans.

As they were making the trip through the upper atmosphere, Jace noticed Ricky take his helmet off and rest it on his lap. The right side of his helmet was covered in tally marks. Ricky took out his combat knife and etched in another three marks. This is something he had been doing since the death of Weathers a couple days ago. Weathers had been killed by an Elite with an energy sword. After his death Ricky vowed to kill as many Elites as he possibly could, so far in that few day span since then he had killed fourteen, now eighteen.

Jace eyed the tally marks counting eighteen, and thought they were gonna get revenge for Weathers and they were gonna do it on their home turf. A smile developed on his face but quickly vanished when he realized that if Earth, humanities last bastion of hope, was under attack then that meant this could be the end of humanity as it stands. He didn't dwell on the thought to long though, putting his head against the bulkhead of the pelican he slowly went into a deep sleep.