X

August 30th, 2552

Aszod Ship-Breaking Yards

Reach

XX

"This is the Pillar of Autumn, we're away; the package is with us."

Spartan-B312 watched as the swirling clouds obscured the Pillar of Autumn, the ship's engines fading into white. Distant flashes of both lightning and plasma alike reflected off of his black MK V(B) MJOLNIR, giving his form a strangely mystical appearance.

Reach was lost.

Noble Six looked at the burning horizon. There was little hope of survival for anyone still planetside now that the last UNSC ship had departed. Anyone that wasn't a Spartan, that was. But even then, nearly all his fellow Spartans had perished. Most everyone had perished.

The Spartan stood in the middle of a dirt road, surrounded by dilapidated and scorched gunmetal gray buildings. A destroyed warthog sat a few meters in front of him, it's melted tires sitting on either side of the disabled vehicle.

He pulled his MA37-ICWS from his back, the counter on his HUD indicating a lack of ammunition. He would need more to face the coming battle. Sparing the purple-orange horizon one last glance, he moved into an adjacent metal building to his right.

The interior was just as weathered and plasma-scorched as the outside. The bloodied body of a Spartan was slumped against the far wall surrounded by two fallen elites. Noble Six made his way over to a UNSC weapons cache in the corner of the room, and took what he could. An M45 Tactical Shotgun and a M392 DMR, along with ammunition for his magnum. He discarded his assault rifle in favor of the shotgun and clamped it to his back, choosing to wield the DMR.

Satisfied with his new loadout, Noble Six made his way back outside, sparing the fallen Spartan a final glance. Outside, the wind had begun to pick up. Freshly burned particles of glass and dirt blew through the air, serving to slightly lower visibility. He glanced at the horizon once more, noticing how the flashes of plasma were getting closer. Even closer were multiple phantoms, all no doubt holding squads of Covenant forces. The purple aircraft seemed to be scouring the area for survivors, most likely hoping to pick off any resistance.

He needed to escape. To fight. To survive.

He wouldn't rest until he could ensure humanity's safety. It was his reason for existing, the very thing he had been created for. Originally, at least.

The sight of one of the phantoms dropping off a squad snapped him out of his thoughts. A multitude of both grunts and elites hopped out of the aircraft. He was running out of time to escape. He quickly moved down the dirt road, keeping a close eye on both his surroundings and his motion tracker.

His motion tracker picked up movement, the red blips recognizing them as hostile. Noble Six quickly took cover once he spotted them. Two elite minors and three grunts, all standing next to a large gray garage building. The garage most likely held some form of transport, making it his target.

With this in mind, the Spartan sighted in on one of the elite's split heads. He opened fire, sending round after round to weather down the alien's shielding. The group of Covenant panicked, seeming to forgo any sense of organization when faced with an unseen enemy. He pierced the shields of his target, finally ending it's life with a bullet to the skull. The remaining elite took cover behind the garage, while the three grunts fired in random directions, hoping to hit something.

Six moved up, darting from cover to cover to avoid being seen. He stopped his advance once he had reached a building on the other side of the dirt road, adjacent to the garage. The Spartan leaned around the corner of the building and fired at the grunts, who were still running in uncoordinated circles. Their bodies all hit the ground with low thuds in near perfect sync. The remaining elite let out a distressed roar as it watched it's allies fall, before sprinting out of cover towards where Six was hiding.

As soon as the elite neared, the Spartan darted around the corner and sent a powerful roundhouse kick to the alien's split jaw. It's shields broke from the force and it's head was reduced to a bloodied mess. The elite's body was sent flying back a few meters before coming to rest next to it's fallen comrade. Six glanced at his motion tracker, making sure there were no remaining hostiles. There were none, but he was sure the battle hadn't gone unnoticed. He needed to hurry.

Six quickly rushed inside the garage through an open doorway on the left side of the building. He glanced around the room, noticing the racks of tools and spare warthog parts. Half a dozen civilian bodies littered the floor, caked with dried blood and dirt. He pointedly ignored the corpses and made his way to a doorway across the room that led into the garage itself. He had seen such a sight many times before. He entered the garage.

It seemed his luck held out.

He spotted two intact civilian class warthogs inside. The Spartan approached the nearest one and checked the fuel gauge. The hydrogen tanks were nearly topped off, which would allow him to get to his next destination with fuel to spare. The Sabre Program Research Range. He moved to the still closed garage door and gripped a handle near the bottom. He pulled the garage door up and open, the door's dirtied hinges squealing in protest.

Spartan-B312 returned to the M12 FAV and hopped into the driver's seat, the vehicle's engine roaring to life as he pressed the ignition. He checked his motion tracker once more, before he put the pedal to the metal and peeled out of the garage, speeding down the dirt road as fast as the vehicle would go.

He had a plan. Get to the Sabre Facility, re-arm, hope that at least one other Sabre was functional, land on the lead Covenant ship… Then what? He was confident in his ability to take on the forces on board a carrier, but how would he control the ship? He couldn't fly it, he had neither the know-how nor an AI to pilot it.

That meant he couldn't escape Reach.

The cold reality of his inevitable demise dawned on him, before being replaced by a sense of spiteful determination. He would fall, but he'd be damned if he didn't do as much damage to the Covenant as he could. It would kill him, of that Six was sure of, but that didn't matter. He would take far more of them screaming to Hell with him.

He swerved under a concrete overpass to avoid a Covenant patrol.

So, new plan. Get to the Sabre Facility, re-arm, take Sabre to space and sabotage Covenant fleet command. Simple enough. Only thing he had to figure out now - the warthog bounced as he ran over a handful of grunts - was how to sabotage the ship. He couldn't make another slipspace bomb, seeing as he had neither a Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace Drive or the materials to rig the bomb in the first place.

So, improvisation. He was good at that.

It was why ONI had made use of him so many times.

-the screams of insurrectionist civilians drowned out by gunfire-

Noble Six banished those memories to the deepest recesses of his mind, where they belonged. He couldn't be allowed to be compromised, not during humanities darkest hour.

Back to the plan. He would most likely be able to find a way to sabotage the carrier's reactors, he would just need to fight his way through the ship to get there. Easy enough, he'd done it multiple times before. Six turned the warthog off of the cracked freeway and onto a beaten road that led through the mountains. The road would act as a shortcut to his destination, allowing him to avoid going through the ruins of New Alexandria and being attacked by Covenant forces.

With a clear plan in mind, Noble Six drove down the beaten path and into the mountains. He drove for hours on end, weaving through scorched forests and destroyed roads. The hours seemed to blend together as he avoided Covenant patrols, following the winding roads to his destination. In the distance, the ruined remains that was once the bustling city of New Alexandria came into view. Jagged skeletons of ruined skyscrapers and spires stood as tall as ever, as if to defy the will of their alien aggressors. Two SDV-class Covenant corvettes hovered over the once great city, acting as a base for the multitude of phantoms and banshees that weaved between the slagged towers.

The sight of the ruined city might have once filled him with righteous fury, leaving him with the need to avenge that which had been destroyed. But all he felt was sorrow. Sorrow, and a sense of tiredness. They had glassed his homeworld, turned his family into dust. He had wanted revenge, vengeance for those he cherished. He had learned the hard way that revenge was a fool's game. He could only do his duty, to fight for humanity. And so he would.

Another two hours passed and he eventually reached the coast, the sandy beaches far colder and darker than usual, thanks to the seemingly endless thundering clouds above. The spires of the Sabre Facility quickly approached as he drove through the sand. Once he reached the front gate of the facility, he dismounted his vehicle and checked his armaments. He had 7 mags for his DMR, all holding 15 rounds each, which came out to 105 shots. That would only be enough for a few engagements. He had 30 shots for his shotgun and 4 magazines for his magnum, along with his trusty 10-inch titanium coated combat knife.

He would check out the armory once he made it inside, he decided. He spared a glance at the sea, staring at the blazing orange horizon, before moving towards the terminal on the left side of the large steel doors. He entered the security code, and the steel doors parted, allowing the Spartan to enter. The halls were dark and quiet, the only source of light being the flaring red emergency lights that lined the grey walls.

As he entered the main junction, he noticed multiple gray ghost signatures on his motion tracker. That only ever happened when someone was jamming his tracker, which the active camouflage systems that elites and spartans utilized did. That meant that there was someone - or something - that was cloaked nearby.

He would have to be very cautious.

Six pulled his shotgun from his back and clamped his DMR. The shotgun far outclassed the DMR in close range, and he didn't want to be caught off guard. The Spartan stalked through the hallways, his head on a swivel and his weapon at the ready. He needed to find the armory.

He turned another corner, slowly walking through the next hallway. Up ahead was a steel door with a keypad next to it. The word "Armory" was painted in white just above the steel door, his objective. He glanced behind him once more, before moving to the keypad and entering the security code. The keypad flashed green and the door slid open-

Noble Six dove to the right, barely avoiding a scorching slash from an energy sword's twin blades. He quickly stood up and backpedaled, aiming his shotgun at his attacker. An elite, a zealot if the ornate white armor was anything to go by. In it's right hand was a particular energy sword. The handle was wider than usual and dark black, the lethal blade itself being an eerie shade of reddish-orange. The elite let out a roar in challenge, before charging at him. Six fired off a blast from his shotgun, causing the elite's energy shields to flare.

The Spartan ducked under a horizontal slash and stepped into the alien's guard. He sent an augmented punch into the elite's mandibles, the force of the hit shattered it's shields and it's jaws, a sickening crunch reverberating within the metal hallway. Six deftly avoided another enraged strike, before he grabbed the elites arm with one hand and pulled the elite into a powerful kick, heavily denting it's armor and pulverizing it's insides. The force from the kick sent it skidding back against the wall next to the armory door.

The severely beaten alien slumped to the floor, any remaining will to fight leaving it's body. The creature coughed up a glob of purple blood, before looking up at the Spartan's form.

"Kisa'maa…" the elite rasped, it's broken jaw causing it's usual rumbling speech to come out garbled. With one last hostile growl, the elite's body went limp, signifying it's death. Noble Six shot it in the face with his shotgun anyways. Just to be sure.

Six slowly approached the deceased creature, glancing at his motion tracker. The ghost signatures had vanished, leaving only his own yellow indicator in the center of the radar. So the elite had been cloaked, most likely searching the facility for any stragglers. It was probably not alone, so he would have to keep his guard up. Not that he would have lowered it.

Reaching down, Noble Six grasped the active camouflage module on the back of the elite's armor. He observed the purple and blue device for a moment, before placing it in his own armor ability slot. Invisibility would definitely be useful when infiltrating the Covenant ship. Glancing back at the elite, Six noticed the strange energy sword's handle. He picked it up, careful not to point the end the sword came out at himself. There were three buttons, two in the form of triggers on either side of the inside of the handle, and one circular button on the side.

Six tightly gripped the weapon's handle, impressing the triggers and activating the weapon. The blades sparked to life, the signature electric sound accompanying it. Just like it's handle, the unique energy sword's blade was larger than usual. Orange sparks flew off the weapon as the Spartan held it in front of him, their eerie glow reflecting off his black armor. After a moment of staring at the incredibly lethal blade, he let go of the triggers, which caused the blade to disappear.

After placing the energy sword's handle on his left thigh, Spartan-B312 entered the armory. Many of the weapon racks on the walls were empty, the weapons having been used to fend off the initial attack. There was still a large amount of both weaponry and ammunition, but less than he would have liked. He chose to replace his DMR with an MA37-ICWS, largely due to their similar ammunition and the assault rifle's larger magazine. Six grabbed a few fragmentation grenades, along with two extra mags for his magnum and a spare box of shotgun shells.

The Spartan was about to exit the armory when he spotted a particular symbol on a crate across the room. He approached the crate and inspected it. The label on the top of the box simply read "CAUTION: THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON", and considering the box's rather small size, that could only mean one thing.

Six had just found the solution to his starship sabotage problem.

B312 tore open the top of the crate and looked inside. The box held a small gray and white device, shaped like a very large bullet. Six immediately recognized the device for what it was, discarding all thoughts questioning why it had come to be here.

A HAVOK Tactical Nuclear Weapon. The deceptively small weapon was powerful enough to scorch an area of over 20 square miles. With a yield of 30 megatons, the thermonuclear device would easily be enough to destroy a Covenant carrier. Maybe even a supercarrier if he could get it into the vicinity of the primary reactors. Six reached into the crate and took the bomb, clamping it to his back, just underneath his shotgun.

Noble Six made his way out of the armory and to the main control center. He moved with a purpose, his elegant yet cautious gait something only a spartan could pull off. Once he reached the primary launch controls, he punched in the familiar launch sequences and waited for the titanium ceiling that covered the launch bay to recede. Once it was ready for initialization, Six did one last armament check.

There would be no going back.

The Spartan looked at both his HUD and himself. 4 frag grenades, an unusual energy sword, M6D Magnum with 6 mags, MA37 with 10 mags, M45 shotgun with 50 shots, a hand-held tactical nuke, and his 10-inch serrated combat knife. He had enough to take on an entire army. And he would have to make each shot count to succeed.

Glancing at the launch controls once more, Six moved through the hallway to his right and onto the launch pad. He ascended the stairs up to the cockpit and climbed in, having to shift his body around slightly due to the number of weapons on his armor. B312 ran a quick diagnostic, all systems coming back as green. The Spartan deeply inhaled through his nose, before moving his hand over the launch button. He exhaled, and pushed.

"Struts disengaged." a robotic female voice said. The cockpit began to close.

"Commencing launch sequence; in T minus…" the Sabre's engines roared to life.

"Five" he grasped the familiar controls.

"Four" stared into the raging skies.

"Three" steeled his being.

"Two" and focused.

"One" the boosters roared.

The Sabre launched into the skies, gaining altitude at breakneck speeds. Six kept his gaze straight, occasionally glancing at down at the screens in front of him. After roughly half a minute of vertical boosting, he finally exited Reach's stormy atmosphere. The boosters on his Sabre decoupled, and he activated his wing-mounted thrusters. As he flew through the vacuum of space, avoiding the occasional chunk of destroyed spacecraft, he actively scanned for any hostiles.

After half a dozen minutes of flying, a multitude of red blips finally appeared on radar. He altered his course and flew towards the enemy signatures. The Covenant Armada quickly came into view, and luckily - or unluckily for the nuke on his backside - there were no 28 kilometer long supercarriers. There was a single CAS-class carrier, surrounded by CCS-class battlecruisers and SDV-class destroyers. It would be risky attempting to get through to the carrier, but he could do it. He had to.

The Sabre boosted towards the starships and Six readied his weapons systems. He was in for a fight. The carrier sent out a mere dozen seraphs in response to his presence, meaning they were underestimating him. Good.

Six impressed the trigger on the flight stick and opened fire on the Covenant starfighters, pelting their shields with 30mm explosive rounds. The first seraph's shields gave quickly, the autocannons shredding the sleek armor beneath. As soon as the first seraph exploded in a fiery haze, Six switched targets, dodging superheated hydrogen fluoride from both the starships and the fighters. He quickly blasted his second adversary to bits and locked on to his third, a salvo of seeking medusa missiles breaking through the seraph's shielding. The Spartan rolled the Sabre to avoid a plasma torpedo and finished off his unshielded foe.

Half of the initial group of seraphs were destroyed in seconds, Six's unrivalled skill in the Sabre allowing him to decimate the rest even quicker. The Covenant seemed to figure out that this was no ordinary pilot, and began launching spacecraft by the dozens.

He didn't have time for this.

Noble Six disengaged from his current target and changed his trajectory to the carrier's hangar. It would be unshielded to allow the seraphs and banshees to exit, but only for a short period of time. He rolled and weaved through the veritable wall of plasma that assaulted him, only taking glancing hits that barely drained his shields. Six activated his wing-mounted thrusters and flew through the plasma filled void.

Closing in on the unshielded hangar, Six disengaged his rear thrusters and began to slow. This was going to be a rough landing. At the moment before contact with the hangar floor, Six pulled the nose of the Sabre upwards. The starfighter skidded through the hangar bay, running over banshees and their pilots. Six leapt out of the cockpit before the Sabre even stopped, firing at any he could.

Depleted uranium pierced the skulls of grunts and elites alike, the aliens not having time to take cover after avoiding the starfighter. Six landed in a crouch, and sprinted through the hangar, avoiding blasts of plasma and returning fire. He ran to the rear of the hangar, to a doorway that would lead to the engine room. The purple door opened, two grunts inside yelling in surprise. He quickly sent a burst to each of their heads and continued on.

Noble Six stopped just before the next doorway that would lead into another hangar bay. He wanted to preserve as much ammunition as possible to clear the engine room, so stealth would be the best course of action. He would have to be cautious around elites, the active camouflage's motion sensor jammer would put them on edge.

Six activated the camouflage, his dark form disappearing from sight, and moved out. He hugged the walls to his right, careful not to alert any of the scrambling grunts or elites. Just as he was about to make it to the next doorway, his camouflage began to fade, it's 40-second lifespan coming to an end. With his form now fully visible, the Spartan ran to the door, his footsteps impossibly quiet.

Just as the purple door closed behind him, he heard the yell of a grunt from the hangar. Knowing he had been spotted, Six grabbed his shotgun and sprinted down the halls. He encountered surprisingly little resistance along the way, the occasional elite minor or grunt, which he quickly dispatched. The Spartan continued to move through the winding purple tunnels, until he finally reached his destination.

The engine room was large, far larger than he had thought it would be. The roof was at least 30 meters above him, with the room itself being seemingly endless. There were a wide array of purple alien reactors surrounding a massive blue core of plasma. The plasmic core was suspended between two spires, one from the ceiling and the other from the floor. There was a distinctive lack of Covenant within the room, meaning he wouldn't get to use all his ammo.

A shame.

Six ducked behind one of the reactors to avoid a passing elite, the alien rushing to the door he had just exited. It seemed that all hands had been called to the hangars to search for him. Good, it would make his job easier.

Noble Six reactivated his active camouflage and stalked down the narrow pathway between the reactors and the walls. There were one or two elites on the catwalks above him, most likely monitoring the reactor itself. There was no reason to attempt to kill them now, they would all be obliterated by the blast.

The Spartan turned down another narrow path that lead to the core itself. His camouflage ran out once more, but it didn't matter at this point. They couldn't stop him.

He reached the core, his large form nothing more than a tiny speck in comparison. Six grabbed the HAVOK Tactical Nuke from his back and primed it, the tip of the bomb lifting upwards. He placed his shotgun on his back, along with his assault rifle, and held the nuke in his hands.

After a moment, the light on the bomb turned green, indicating that it was ready for detonation. The Spartan stared at it for a moment, contemplating the device that would be his end. He would die.

For Humanity.

He brought his hand over the detonator.

For his team.

He pressed down.

For Reach.

The world was engulfed in white.