"You need not fight no longer."

It was the painful truth; hard as it was to accept it, to embrace it, to understand it, Earth would fall.

As I kneel here, spirit shattered like many pieces of Mjolnir now lying decadent on silky floor of the Infinity, I look back on where it all went wrong. We had fired Halo as planned, bringing about the destruction of the Flood. We fled the Ark, its surface quickly being torn asunder from the premature firing, as we rushed back to Earth; our Earth.

We did not expec for the many remnants of the Covenant to recoup their losses so quickly. We did not expect for the Shangheili, who stayed their feet and fought alongside us to callously run away, to defend whatever they could hold on to against the oncoming hordes of those who remained loyal to their cause.

In three weeks' time, they came back. Came back to bring about the ruination of Earth's treasured sons and daughters; they came back to finish what they started all those many decades ago.

I bled and fought for months; begging amidst the cloud of doubt festering inside my Spartan mind for aid to come. We fought with whatever we could, wasting away in on the soil with which our forefathers gave birth to mankind. They came, slaughtering man, woman, and child.

No help came.

And with this, on a desperate gamble, failed amidst the dying echoes of our crumbling empire, I have finally come to accept that we had fallen.

On an experimental and unfinished ship, we loaded what survivors we could. We aimed everything we had in the middle of a sea of ships, hoping against all odds that a small hole through which our ship could navigate through would come into existence. We bet everything we had left on the success of this one mission.

And we failed.

Disabled and broken, we lay in the middle of their fleet, preparing ourselves for the inevitable. Wave after wave of them came; boarding with their savage might as they continued with renewed vigor in their extermination. We were to be defeated, and the smell of a victory despite all they have lost was too great a cry for the loyalists.

I fought; we fought. The line separating man from machine, Spartan from all the rest: it all blurred itself out in the cacophony and staccato of a dying species. We were one. We were all human.

But being human was simply not enough.

Despite our best efforts, they had broken through.

With pierced hearts, the best of us could not hold back the tide.

We had fought on the beaches, in the ships, in the cities and in the streets; we had fought in the jungles, in the constructs of great design, in the air, in the high seas and in the great void of space.

But humanity's end was nigh, and the final breath and battle would be in this ship. Infinity. With a distaste not normally displayed by Spartans, I accepted our fate. Our species was not to be bound to this existence; but we would always be remembered. We would be regarded as those that stood against all odds, refusing to surrender to an enemy hell bent on destroying them. In this life or the next, the word human would be synonymous to a victory that forever eludes one's self, but would always be an individual's worthy pursuit.

We would be remembered.

Human will forever exist in infinity.

And so I stood, shaking off the last pieces of my trusty armor; helm removed, and knees shaking despite the augmentations that have pierced more than just my body, but so too my soul, I stood.

My companion was silent, for she had accepted what was staring her in the eye. No amount of intelligence could refute the simple fact that our species was dead.

But I refuse to sit here in defeat any longer. I refuse to let a whimper be the end of my beloved UNSC, of my beloved UEG, of my beloved Humanity. I refuse, even as I looked out into the milky vastness of space, even as I looked at the many ships turning their predatory gaze to us, priming and aiming the many weapons that dotted their ships.

I refuse.

We had fought for so long against them. Not from tyranny, oppression or persecution…but from annihilation. We have fought for our right to live. To exist.

We would not win today. There shall be no victory, nor day, with which we would all look back to as the day that humanity declared in one voice that they had won.

Today shall be the day, for it would be written forever in the blood of 39 billion humans, forever extinguished from this universe that as one voice, one body, one mind and one soul, humanity declared that it would not go quietly into the night.

I take one last look back at the small view port, searing into my mind the image of a burning Earth.

With a single, gloved hand, I pressed dials; calibrated everything I could to get this right.

My companion finally spoke to guide me, and I would forever remember the bond between man and machine; of flesh and code.

Humanity would not end in a whimper; it would end with a bang.

With one final breath, with one final glace, I pressed the ignition.

39 billion humans would forever be lost, and we would not be coming back.

39 billion souls.

The Infinity was an experimental ship; it was to be humanity's final Ark. Though it had failed at its primary mission, it would be humanity's ship to the after-life.

From the few dozen souls still alive on Earth, and of the millions of loyalist Covenant in their ships, they watched either in defeat or victory, as the ship of 5-kilometers whirred to life one last time. It fired everything it had, which was mostly shrugged off by the vastly superior opposing fleet.

They watched, as an inky black hole emanated from the ship's nose, quickly growing in size and strength, engulfing the tiny human ship and all of those belonging to the Covenant surrounding it.

Late did they realize their demise.

And fail they did to act upon it.

The rupture grew and grew, faster than anyone could have predicted, faster than anyone could have escaped. The sky of Earth was shadowed over by this view, as more than half of the Covenant's fleet was caught in the sphere.

And like a bubble, the sphere burst.

A bang.