Halo : The Fall of Reach

PROLOGUE

0500 Hours, February 12, 2535 (Military Calendar) \
Lambda Serpentis System, Jerico VII Theater
of Operations

“Contact. All teams stand by: enemy contact, my position.”

The Chief knew there were probably more than a hundred
of them–motion sensors were off the scale. He wanted to see
them for himself, though; his training made that lesson
clear–“Machines break. Eyes don’t.”

The four Spartans that comprised Blue Team covered his
back, standing absolutely silent and immobile in their
MJOLNIR combat armor. Someone had once commented
they looked like Greek war gods in the armor . . . but his
Spartans were far more effective and ruthless than Homer’s
gods had ever been.

He snaked the fiber-optic probe up and over the three-meter
high stone ridge. When it was in place, the Chief linked
it to his helmet’s heads-up display.

On the other side he saw a valley with eroded rock walls
and a river meandering through it . . . and camped along the
banks as far as he could see were Grunts.

The Covenant used these stocky aliens as cannon fodder.
They stood a meter tall and wore armored environment suits
that replicated the atmosphere of their frozen homeworld.
They reminded the Chief of biped dogs, not only in appear-ance,
but because their speech–even with the new translation
software–was an odd combination of high-pitched
squeaks, guttural barks and growls.

They were about as smart as dogs, too. But what they
lacked in brainpower, they made up for in sheer tenacity. He
had seen them hurl themselves at their enemies until the
ground was piled high with their corpses . . . and their opponents
had depleted their ammunition.

These Grunts were unusually well armed: needlers,
plasma pistols, and there were four stationary plasma can-nons.
Those could be a problem.

One other problem: there were easily a thousand of them.

This operation had to go off without a hitch. Blue Team’s
mission was to draw out the Covenant rear guard, and let Red
Team slip through in the confusion. Red Team would then
plant a HAVOK tactical nuke. When the next Covenant ship
landed, dropped their shields, and started to unload their
troops, they’d get a thirty-megaton surprise.

The Chief detached the optics, and took a step back from
the rock wall. He passed the tactical information along to his
team over a secure COM channel.

“Four of us,” Blue-Two whispered over the link. “And a
thousand of them? Piss poor odds for the little guys.”

“Blue-Two,” the Chief said, “I want you up with those
Jackhammer launchers. Take out the cannons and soften the
rest of them. Blue-Three and Five, you follow me up–we’re
on crowd control. Blue-Four: you get the welcome mat ready.
Understood?”

Four blue lights winked on his heads-up display as his
team acknowledged the orders.

“On my mark.” The Chief crouched and readied himself.
“Mark!”

Blue-Two jumped atop the ridge–three meters straight
up. There was no sound as the half-ton of MJOLNIR armor
and Spartan landed on the limestone.

She hefted one launcher and ran along the ridge–she was
the fastest Spartan on the Chief’s team. He was confident
those Grunts wouldn’t be able to track her for the three seconds
she’d be exposed. In quick succession, Blue-Two emptied
both of the Jackhammer’s tubes, dropped one launcher
and then fired the other rockets just as fast. The shells
streaked into the Grunts’ formation and detonated. One of the
stationary guns flipped over, engulfed in the blast, and the
gunner was flung to the ground.

She ditched the launcher, jumped down–rolled once–
and was back on her feet, running at top speed to the fallback
point.

The Chief, Blue-Three, and Blue-Five leapt to the top of
the ridge. The Chief switched to infrared to cut through the
clouds of dust and propellant exhaust just in time to see the
second salvo of Jackhammers strike their targets. Two consecutive
blossoms of flash, fire, and thunder decimated the
front ranks of the Grunt guards and most importantly, turned
the last of the plasma cannons into smoldering wreckage.

The Chief and the others opened fire with their MA5B assault
rifles–a full automatic spray of fifteen rounds per
second. Armor piercing bullets tore into the aliens, breaching their
environment suits, and sparking the methane tanks they carried.
Gouts of flame traced wild arcs as the wounded Grunts ran in
confusion and pain.

The Grunts then realized what was happening–and where
this attack was coming from. They charged en masse. An
earthquake vibration coursed through the ground and shook
the porous stone beneath the Chief’s boots.

The three Spartans exhausted their AP clips and then, in
unison, switched to shredder rounds. They fired into the tide
of creatures as they surged forward. Line after line of them
dropped. Scores more just trampled their fallen comrades.

Explosive needles bounced off the Chief’s armor, detonating
as they hit the ground. He saw the flash of a plasma
bolt–side stepped–and heard the air crackle where he had
stood a split-second before.

“Inbound Covenant air support,” Blue-Four reported over
the COM link. “ETA is two minutes, Chief.”

“Roger that,” he said. “Blue-Three and Five: maintain fire
for five seconds, then fall back.”

Their status lights winked once, acknowledging his order.

The Grunts were three meters from the wall. The Chief
tossed two grenades. He, Blue-Three, and Five stepped back-
ward off the ridge, landed, spun, and ran.

Two dull thumps reverberated though the ground. The
squeals and barks of the incoming Grunts, however, drowned
out the noise of the exploding grenades.

The Chief and his team sprinted up the half-kilometer
sandstone slope in thirty-two seconds flat. The hill ended
abruptly–a sheer drop two hundred meters into the ocean.

Blue-Four’s voice crackled over the COM channel: “Welcome
mat is laid out, Chief. Ready when you are.”

The Grunts looked like a living carpet of steel-blue skin,
claws and chrome weapons. Some ran on all fours up the
slope. They barked and howled, baying for the Spartans’
blood.

“Roll out the carpet,” the Chief told Blue-Four.

The hill exploded–plumes of pulverized sandstone and
fire and smoke hurtled skyward.

The Spartans had buried a spiderweb pattern of Lotus anti-tank
mines earlier that morning.

Sand and bits of metal pinged off of the Chief ’s helmet.

The Chief and his team opened fire, picking off the re-maining Grunts
that were still alive and struggling to stand.

His motion detector flashed a warning. There were incoming
projectiles high at two o’clock–velocities at over a
hundred kilometers per hour.

Five Covenant Banshee flyers appeared over the ridge.

“New contacts. All teams, open fire!” he barked.

The Spartans, without hesitation, fired on the alien fliers.
Bullet hits pinged from the flyers’ chitinous armor–it would
take a lucky shot to take out the antigrav pods on the end of
the craft’s stubby meter-long “wings.”

The fire got the aliens’ attention, however. Lances of fire
slashed from the Banshees’ gunports.

The Chief dove and rolled to his feet. Sandstone exploded
where he had stood an instant before. Globules of molten
glass sprayed the Spartans.

The Banshee flyers screamed over their heads–then
banked sharply for another pass.

“Blue-Three, Blue-Five: Theta Maneuver,” the Chief
called out.

Blue-Three and Five gave him the thumbs-up signal.

They regrouped at the edge of the cliff and clipped onto the
steel cables that dangled down the length of the rock wall.

“Did you set up the fougasses with fire or shrapnel?” the
Chief asked.

“Both,” Blue-Three replied.

“Good.” The Chief grabbed the detonators. “Cover me.”

The fougasses were never meant to take down flying tar-gets;
the Spartans had put them there to mop up the Grunts. In
the field, though, you had to improvise. Another tenet of their
training: adapt or die.

The Banshees formed into a “flying V” and swooped
toward them, almost brushing the ground.

The Spartans opened fire.

Bolts of superheated plasma from the Banshees punctuated
the air.

The Chief dodged to the right, then to the left; he ducked.
Their aim was getting better.

The Banshees were one hundred meters away, then fifty
meters. Their plasma weapons might recycle fast enough to
get another shot . . . and at this range, the Chief wouldn’t be dodging.

The Spartans jumped backwards off the cliff–guns still
blazing. The Chief jumped too, and hit the detonators.

The ten fougasses–each a steel barrel filled with napalm
and spent AP and shredder casings–had been buried a few
meters from the edge of the cliff, their mouths angled up at
thirty degrees. When the grenades at the bottom of the barrels
exploded, it made one hell of a barbecue out of anything in their way.

The Spartans slammed into the side of the cliff–the steel
cables they were attached to twanged taut.

A wave of heat and pressure washed over them. A heart-beat
later five flaming Banshees plummeted over their heads,
leaving thick trails of black smoke as they arced into the
water. They splashed down, then vanished beneath the
emerald waves. The Spartans hung there a moment, waiting
and watching with their assault rifles trained on the water.
No survivors surfaced.

They rappelled down to the beach and rendezvoused with
Blue-Two and Four.

“Red Team reports mission objective achieved, Chief,”
Blue Two said. “They send their compliments.”

“It’s hardly going to balance the scales,” Blue-Three muttered
and kicked the sand. “Not like those Grunts when they
slaughtered the 105th Drop Jet platoon. They should suffer
just as much as those guys did.”

The Chief had nothing to say to that. He wasn’t his job to
make things suffer–he was just here to win battles. What-ever
it took.

“Blue-Two,” the Chief said. “Get me an uplink.”

“Aye aye.” She patched him into the SATCOM system.

“Mission accomplished, Captain de Blanc,” the Chief reported.
“Enemy neutralized.”

“Excellent news,” the Captain said. He sighed, and added,
“But we’re pulling you out, Chief.”

“We’re just getting warmed up down here, sir.”

“Well, it’s a different story up here. Move out for pickup
ASAP.”

“Understood, sir.” The Chief killed the uplink. He told his
team, “The party is over Spartans. Dust-off in fifteen.”

They jogged double-quick up the ten kilometers of the
beach, and returned to their dropship–a Pelican, scuffed and
dented from three days’ hard fighting. They boarded and the
ships’ engines whined to life.

Blue-Two took off her helmet and scratched the stubble of
her brown hair. “It’s a shame to leave this place,” she said and
learned against the porthole. “There are so few left.”

The Chief stood by her and glanced out as they lifted into
the air–there were wide rolling plains of palmgrass, the
green expanse of ocean, a wispy band of clouds in the sky,
and setting red suns.

“There will be other places to fight for,” he said.

“Will there?” she whispered.

The Pelican ascended rapidly through the atmosphere, the
sky darkened and soon only stars surrounded them.
In orbit, there were dozens of frigates, destroyers, and two
massive carriers. Every ship had carbon scoring, and holes
peppering their hulls. They were all maneuvering to break
orbit.

They docked in the port bay of the UNSC Destroyer Resolute.
Despite being surrounded by two meters of titanium-A
battle plate and an array of modern weapons, the Chief pre-
ferred to have his feet on the ground, with real gravity, and
real atmosphere to breathe–a place where he was in control,
and where his life wasn’t in the hands of anonymous pilots. A
ship just wasn’t home.

The battlefield was.

The Chief rode the elevator to the bridge to make his report,
taking advantage of the momentary respite to read Red
Team’s after-action report in his display. As predicted, the
Spartans of Red, Blue, and Green teams–augmenting three
divisions of battle-hardened UNSC Marines–had stalled a
Covenant ground advance. Casualty figures were still coming
in, but–on the ground, at least–the alien forces had been
completely stonewalled.

A moment later, the lift doors parted, and he stepped on the
rubberized deck. He snapped a crisp salute to Captain de
Blanc. “Sir. Reporting as ordered.”

The junior bridge officers took a step back from the Chief.
They weren’t used to seeing a Spartan in full MJOLNIR
armor up close–most line troops had never even seen a
Spartan. The ghostly iridescent green of the armor plates and
the matte black layers underneath made him look part gladi-ator,
part machine. Or perhaps to the bridge crew, he looked
as alien as the Covenant.

The view screens showed stars and Jerico VII’s four silver
moons. At extreme range, a small constellation of stars
drifted closer.

The Captain waved the Chief closer and as he stared at that
cluster of stars–the rest of the battlegroup. “It’s happening
again.”

“Request permission to remain on the bridge, sir,” the
Chief said. “I . . . want to see it this time, sir.”

The Captain hung his head, weary. He looked at the Master
Chief with haunted eyes. “Very well, Chief. After all you’ve
been through to save Jerico VII, we owe you that. We’re only
thirty million kilometers out-system, though, not half as far
as I’d like to be.” He turned to the NAV Officer. “Bearing one
two zero. Prepare our exit vector.”

He turned to face the Chief. “We’ll stay to watch . . . but if those
bastards so much as twitch in our direction, we’re
jumping the hell out of here.”

“Understood, sir. Thank you.”

Resolute’s engines rumbled and the ship moved off.

Three dozen Covenant ships–big ones, destroyers and
cruisers–winked into view in the system. They were sleek,
looking more like sharks than starcraft. Their lateral lines
brightened with plasma–then discharged and rained fire
down upon Jerico VII.

The Chief watched for an hour and didn’t move a muscle.

The planet’s lakes, rivers, and oceans vaporized. By tomorrow,
the atmosphere would boil away, too. Fields and
forests were glassy smooth and glowing red-hot in patches.
Where there had once been a paradise, only hell remained.

“Make ready to jump clear of the system,” the Captain or-dered.

The Chief continued to watch, his face grim.

There had been ten years of this–the vast network of
human colonies whittled down to a handful of strongholds by
a merciless, implacable enemy. The Chief had killed the
enemy on the ground–shot them, stabbed them, and broken
them in his hands. On the ground, the Spartans always won.

The problem was, the Spartans couldn’t take their fight
into space. Every minor victory on the ground turned into a
major defeat in orbit.

Soon, there would be no more colonies, no human settlements–
and nowhere left to run.