Humanity had been expanding for centuries. Establishing cities on other planets in other systems of the galaxy, they sought to find new worlds and life…
Then they found something that they shouldn’t have.
The Covenant: a galaxy-spanning religious empire of dozens of alien species. The Covenant believed that Humanity was something to be wiped out. Their Prophet claimed they should be purged. Thus, the Human-Covenant War began. The war has waged for fifteen years, and the UNSC, or United Nations Space Command, government of Humanity, developed a way to end the war:
The Spartans. Over a hundred highly trained soldiers chosen from the best of the military, conditioned to be far superior to any soldier of the Covenant and given the best equipment available, they became the key to victory for the UNSC.
Five years have passed since the first Spartans joined the war. Legends have been made. Bonds have been forged. Battles have been won and lost.
But the war is still not over…
Story One: “Reach”
Date: June 6th, 2551
Location: UNSC headquarters, Reach
The armory was quiet. Cortana found the silence dull, passing time solving complex puzzles. Master Chief never figured an A.I. could have the mental capacity to be bored.
It was around 0300. Hardly anyone was awake then, except the night guard marines, but they were all patrolling the base's perimeter and around the halls.
Nobody bothered patrolling the Spartans’ quarters. All the marines figured anyone would be crazy to try and sneak into a complex full of super-soldiers.
Unlike Cortana, Chief found the silence peaceful. Quiet moments of peace weren’t exactly common in the war. He had decided to go on a one-month leave and try and get some rest. He still had trouble sleeping.
He was already trained to sleep lightly in case of an unexpected attack, and to operate on only four hours of sleep a night, but that wasn’t what was causing this. He was still having nightmares about the war.
Master Chief was sitting on a crate of ammunition in the center of the room, with his back to the door. Metal shelves that held weapons, ammo, and other supplies decorated the walls. Armor display pods dotted the back wall. All but one of them was empty.
Master Chief’s pine green Spartan armor rested in one of the pods behind a door of bulletproof glass, locked by keypad. The number 117 was painted in a bold white font above the glass to let everyone know whose armor was supposed to be in that pod. That armor was the best the UNSC could offer. Chief could see his reflection in the orange-tinted visor on the helmet’s face.
None of the Spartans were on Reach. Almost all of them were on the frontlines or on other planets. Only Chief was there now.
Every Spartan had a number designation to identify by, along with their first name. Master Chief was only a nickname. His technical military ID was “John-117.”
He looked down and realized he had his hands clenched into fists. He opened his palms and stared at his hands. They were rough and scarred.
He rubbed his eyes and looked around. There was no real reason for leaving the bunk so early. He just needed a place to think in peace.
He had tried a couple of things to take his mind off the war: cleaning his armor, disassembling and reassembling his rifle, taking stock of everything in the armory, and other things. It barely helped.
He heard a light knocking behind him. He turned and saw Dr. Halsey standing in the doorway. She was a scientist in around her mid-forties. with emerald-green eyes and short blond hair that flowed down to her neck.
Halsey and Master Chief were close friends. Halsey had pioneered the Spartan Program, and Chief was one of her favorites. Of all the one-hundred-and-thirty Spartans trained in the program, he outperformed every last one.
After the training, he had been sent straight to the front lines. Over five years of fighting in the war, he had become a poster-boy for the UNSC. Half the reason they were winning the war was because of him.
Halsey had been the one to recruit Chief into the program. She had developed Cortana for combat support. Cortana was designed after Halsey’s personality, but her personality had changed on its own after five years of fighting at Chief’s side. They were both very different people now.
“Hey.” Halsey said, breaking the silence. “I’m worried about you, Chief. This is the third night in a row you haven’t slept. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Chief said. “You’re up early, too.”
“Late night of research.” Halsey replied. “Why are you up?”
“Chief had a nightmare again.” Cortana chimed in.
“I see. The war must be getting to you.” Halsey acknowledged. Her tone sounded concerned.
“Slide over, will you?” she asked politely. Chief obliged, and Halsey sat down next to him on the crate.
“You know, if you need help, I’m here for you.” Halsey said, patting her hand on Chief’s shoulder. She had to reach up to do it, though. Chief was at least a foot taller than her.
“Chief.” Cortana said. “You’ve had an increase in cortisol levels in your body over the last few weeks.”
“You’re feeling stressed?” Halsey asked. “Why?”
Chief looked at his boots, paused, and then spoke. “They tell us the program makes us into superior soldiers. Trains us to be the best of humanity’s soldiers to fight the Covenant.”
Halsey noticed his eyes were starting to water.
Chief continued. “I’ve seen more combat than most of the other Spartans.” He took a breath. “I’ve seen so many marines, soldiers, and civilians die around me in battle… the training prepared us for war, but not for the horrors that came with it.”
Halsey looked at Chief with worry in her eyes. “John,” she said. “You’re one of my closest friends. It makes me sad to see you like this.
I could recommend a therapist. I know some good people.”
“Dr. Halsey, I appreciate your help. Really, I do… but I just think I need to be alone right now.” Chief replied.
A long pause followed up. Halsey stood up and started to leave. She stopped in the doorway and turned to face Master Chief.
“The option is always there if you want it.” She said, and then left.
Chief stood up and started to leave himself. Cortana broke the silence.
“Geez, sometimes it really feels like you can cut the silence between you two with a knife.”
“Cortana, I don’t need to hear this.” Chief replied.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to reject Halsey’s offer?” She asked.
“I just need time.” Chief said.
“Okay.” Cortana stopped talking after that.
Chief decided to head back to the bunks and try and sleep for at least a few hours. He was halfway there when a voice came over the base’s intercom.
“John-117, report to the command room. Repeat, Master Chief, report to the command room.”
“Better get going.” Cortana said.
Chief donned his armor and headed to the control room. The only time a Spartan was summoned, it was for something only they could do, which was usually combat. Standing there, arms crossed, was Admiral Keyes, commander of the UNSC’s fleet.
Keyes was a bald man, and the top of his head was covered by his officer’s hat. He was somewhere in his fifties, and he had a stern face that always looked angry about something. Usually nothing, but this time there was something to be angry about.
On the command table in front of Keyes was a hologram of Reach. Seven, ship-shaped purple dots were closing in on the planet.
Holograms were always colored to show whose side they were on. Blue was UNSC. Purple was Covenant.
Chief had barely stepped into the room before Keyes launched into his briefing.
“John-117. We are facing an issue. Covenant forces began breaching slipspace about an hour ago. They are closing in on the planet, and we do not currently have the resources to successfully fend them off.
We’ve sent distress calls to nearby planets and fleets to send help, but with no guarantee they’ll arrive, let alone on time, we’ll have to make do with what we have. The forces we have here, including yourself, will try and hold off the Covenant while civilians are being evacuated.
Once the civilians are out of danger, depending on the state of our forces, we will either decide to retreat or stand and fight.”
“Got it.” Chief said. “Where do I come in?”
“The Covenant flagship, as far as we can determine, is the Covenant’s CCS-class battlecruiser Purification.” Keyes replied. “Our forces will punch a hole in their lines big enough for you to get through. Unfortunately, the Purification’s cannons would gun down any of our ships, so you’ll have to steal a Covenant fighter and slip aboard.
“Once aboard, you’ll sabotage the reactor and cause the ship to self-destruct. Our hope is that destroying the flagship will demoralize the Covenant into a retreat. In the worst-case, at least that’s one less Covenant ship to have to deal with.”
“Got it. Got it.” Chief said. “Just get me out there.”
Keyes nodded in acknowledgement. “Dismissed. Feel free to do whatever you need to get onto that flagship.”
With that, Master Chief turned and left.
“We should head to the base’s landing platform.” Cortana suggested. “The Covenant’s fighters should hit there first.”
“Agreed.” Chief replied.
The first thing Chief took note of as he walked out onto the landing platform, rifle in hand, was the dark gray stormy sky that hung over all of Reach City. The UNSC base was only just a part of the magnificent skyline. This planet was widely considered the “Jewel of the Colonies.”
Now it would be the site of a devastating battle.
There was thunder but no rain. The clouds would make it difficult to spot the Covenant warships. Marines stood all over the runway, many holding rocket launchers. A pair of recon vehicles, nicknamed “Warthogs” by the marines, rested still, their rear turrets pointing toward the sky.
Air raid sirens were blaring in the distance, and dozens of UNSC transports were flying through the city, evacuating civilians by the hundreds. Admiral Keyes’s warship, an old and bulky Halcyon-Class Light Cruiser called the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, hovered above the city, waiting to receive the evacuation craft.
Chief knew that the warship was large enough to hold thousands of crewmembers and passengers and had enough armor and cannons to hold its own against several Covenant warships at once.
It still wouldn’t be enough. Reach City had a population of ten million. They would need half the UNSC fleet to evacuate that many people in such a short time frame. Still, they were doing what they could.
If Chief could destroy the Purification, they might still stand a chance. The odds were not in their favor, but they rarely were. The silence was unnerving. If the Covenant weren’t even in orbit or right above them, they couldn’t tell. At least not visually.
If they were trying to invade, it was usually for a purpose. Otherwise, they would have started by glassing the city, like they had done to so many other planets.
Chief had seen glassed planets before. They weren’t human planets, but the UNSC would sometimes find moons or planets with surfaces turned crystal. Once, they caught the Covenant in the act.
Back before the war started, a probe discovered Covenant warships firing large purple beams onto a planet’s surface. After the Covenant left, the probe got close enough to see what that had caused. The surface of the planet was left barren, volcanic and scorched. No life survived the surface. Forests were incinerated. Entire oceans turned to steam. The planet was completely unrecognizable.
Only they hadn’t started glassing yet. Why?
Every marine on the platform had their weapons pointed upwards. The faint roar of engines could suddenly be heard. Bursting through the clouds, a hundred Covenant fighters poured like raindrops onto the city.
These fighters were beyond human understanding, utilizing technologies unheard of before the war. They were nicknamed “Banshees” for the sounds their engines made.
And then the sky was alight with fire. Banshees started pelting the city and UNSC base with plasma fire. Marines fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition into the air. A handful of shots hit home, and they turned Banshees into burning scrap metal.
Chief watched as they fell out of the sky, leaving pillars of smoke behind them. The victories were short lived as they fell into the city after they shot them down, careening into skyscrapers and crowded streets.
“As if civilian casualties weren’t high enough already.” Cortana said.
A spray of plasma hit the landing pad. A Warthog and three marines disappeared in a fiery explosion. A marine with a rocket launcher shot the culprit out of the sky as it fled.
The UNSC, while still inflicting casualties on the Covenant, was losing. Chief had to succeed in taking out their command ship. He noticed a low-flying Banshee and saw his opportunity.
It flew so low it nearly collided with the platform. Chief jumped and caught it with his empty hand. For a normal person, that would have ripped their arm off, but the Spartan armor was designed to handle things like that, and much worse.
Still, it took a lot to stop him from falling off. The Banshee’s design allowed it to pull high-G maneuvers without suffering any repercussions. It could shake him off without trying. Chief doubted the pilot even knew he had hitched a ride.
He dug his armor gauntlet into the Banshee’s sleek purple hull. Grabbing at the panel, he ripped it off and watched it vanish behind him, yanked from his hands by the speed. The panicked alien pilot was looking at him with fear in his eyes.
The alien screamed something in a foreign language. Maybe he said “Demon.” According to what little of the Covenant’s language he knew, that was the nickname they had for him.
The alien was called a “Sangheili” by xenologists. They were tall, gray, had oddly shaped heads and a vaguely Humanoid body. He wore cobalt blue battle armor, and carried a secondary weapon of some kind.
Neither of those things would save him now. Chief reached through the hole where the panel once was, grabbed the Sangheili by the shoulder, and tugged him out. The alien warrior fell away in a similar fashion to the panel.
Now, Chief had a very limited time to climb in and pilot before his new ride crashed into Reach City’s burning skyline. He climbed in, grabbed the controls, and strained to pull up before he crashed.
Over his years of service, he piloted many Covenant vehicles. The control layout was familiar, though labels were in a language he couldn’t read, but it was actually easier to fly than most UNSC vehicles, once he got the hang of the controls.
He steered away from the city and flew back up into the clouds where the Banshees had emerged from at the start of the battle.
After breaking through the clouds, Chief set eyes on the Purification’s Battlegroup. The large warship was flanked by six smaller SDV-class heavy corvettes, just as oddly shaped as the other Covenant vessels. This small flotilla was merely a fraction of the Covenant’s fleet, and all it took to level a Human city.
He gunned it straight for the flagship. Over the Banshee’s communications device, an officer began shouting through it in a foreign tongue. Chief ignored the officer and kept going. Whatever he was saying didn’t matter.
He found a hangar bay and flew into it. He skidded the commandeered fighter into the hangar floor, sending sparks flying.
“Still gotta work on properly landing these things.” Said Cortana.
Chief stepped out of the damaged craft to immediately be greeted by several covenant soldiers. They all stood staring at the armor-clad Human in disbelief before raising their weapons and unloading rounds at him.
These soldiers were short, ugly, bipedal turtle-looking aliens nicknamed “Grunts” by the Spartans. They were the least-respected, least-skilled, and least-equipped soldiers in the Covenant. Still, they were an issue in numbers.
Chief took cover behind the Banshee as energy rounds pelted its armor. He peeked over his cover and fired at the nearest enemy, who dropped dead on the steel floor.
His eyes anxiously combed the walls for a way out. A blast door, or an air vent. Something. He found a door and rushed to it.
The sprint across the hangar left him exposed to enemy fire. Green plasma bolts hit his armor and the energy body-shield protecting it. It was built to withstand a good number of attacks, but it wouldn’t last forever.
Once he reached the door, he pounded the door’s control panel, shot it, and rushed through, the Grunts in close pursuit. Once on the other side, he hit the panel to close it again and shot the door controls with his rifle. They sparked, the doors slid shut, and the controls were too damaged to open from either side, separating him from the enemy.
“Great. So much for that way out.” Cortana remarked.
“This ship has escape pods.” Chief replied. “Once we blow the reactor, we’ll take one of those.”
An alarm blared, and a Covenant officer spoke over the comms. It infuriated both Chief and Cortana that they couldn’t understand what they were saying.
The ship rumbled, machinery began humming beneath their feet, then faintly, the sound of an energy beam could be heard.
“The Purification has started the glassing process. Shit.” Cortana said.
“How far is the reactor?” Chief asked.
“If you run, you can be there in five minutes.” She calculated.
Chief didn’t hesitate. The Covenant could melt the city to a smoldering crater in less time. Every second he took to get there, another several thousand died.
Spartans had incredible stamina and speed, enhanced by their armor’s capabilities and their conditioning, it made them inhumanly fast.
He encountered little resistance on the way there, and the resistance he did find, he quickly cut down with his rifle. He almost got lost. All the hallways looked the same. The reactor room stood out once he got there. After all, why wouldn’t it? It was huge.
There were no guards at the core for some reason. The entire room was empty. The reactor’s panel interface wasn’t hard to operate. He tapped the panel, still not understanding what it said.
He was Humanity’s greatest soldier, but when it came to sabotaging the reactor, his strategy was as simple as pushing random buttons on the panel until the alarms went off and the reactor started overheating.
Then it was a sprint to reach the ship’s escape pods. There was heavy pressure to not get lost, because taking too long meant certain death. Chief doubted any shield could withstand such an explosion.
The escape pods stood out, even on the alien ship. That was probably the point to make escape obvious. The pods were many in number, but each pod only sat one person.
Chief mashed the control panel and climbed inside. The shape of it was odd. It was probably designed to fit the odd physique of Covenant personnel. It still fit him, though.
The pod ejected and shot downwards back to the planet’s surface. It reminded Master Chief of some of the drop pods the UNSC’s shock troopers used during orbital drops.
The pod’s retro thrusters fired suddenly as it slowed down before its controlled impact on the surface. After it did, Chief kicked out the door and stepped outside, rifle in-hand.
He was not where he expected. Instead of the city, he was surrounded by dense forest. These were common around the outside of Reach City. He was probably safer here anyway.
Despite the familiar environment, something was… off. The sky was an ominous shade of orange, and ashes fell through the trees.
“Chief, outside temperature and air pollution levels are abnormally high.” Cortana said.
“Are we too late?” Chief asked worriedly.
“We should try and get out of the forest.” Cortana replied. “Maybe then we’ll know.”
Chief looked up in panic. A massive plume of smoke was rising in the distance. Whatever that was, it wasn’t good. He ran through the trees. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he got out, but he had to know.
He emerged from the forest and was horrified. He was too late. Reach City had been glassed. There was nothing left but fiery ruins. It looked like the bowels of Hell itself had opened up to swallow the city whole.
He didn’t even acknowledge the Purification falling out of the sky and crashing a couple miles away. He couldn’t stop the warship in time. Reach City was lost.
Not even Cortana had words for what happened. Chief fell to his knees, his hands shaking. Never before had he seen such destruction on a massive scale or felt such guilt for not being able to stop it.
Before he could do anything else, he was blinded by a spotlight. He looked up to see a UNSC gunship hovering nearby. It landed, and two marines came out.
“Master Chief!” One marine yelled. “We have to go! The Autumn is waiting in orbit, and we have orders to get you the Hell out of here!”
Chief nodded solemnly, stood up, and walked with the marines back onto the gunship without saying a word. He sat down and remained in silence. He could barely process what had just happened. As the gunship went up into orbit to meet with Keyes’s warship and head back to friendly territory, all he could do was stare down at his trembling hands.
For the first time in the war, he had failed in his duty, and millions had died because of it…