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Black Four watched the mission clock flash red and hit zero. They were too far out, too badly positioned, and all out of options. He rounded out from behind the boulder he’d used for cover as they’d descended the grassy hillside, crimson plasma rifle spewing bolts a few shades brighter than its crimson shell.
He caught a trio of grunts with his onslaught, superheated plasma gouging holes in the methane-sucking aliens the same way he’d seen it eat through human beings countless times. A smile twisted on his lips, then faded as the ground at his feet exploded and sent him tumbling backwards.
He’d have cursed himself for letting the Jiralhanae captain catch him off guard with the Bruteshot if his injuries weren’t already so extensive, and it wasn’t like there was any point now. Pain ran up his mangled left arm, hydrostatic gel in his undersuit pressurizing around already broken bone in an attempt to prevent further fracture and taking the agony up several magnitudes. But he grit his teeth and bore it.
Four tumbled and let the red plasma rifle fall away as he heard the familiar crack of his own sniper rifle in the hands of another.
“Get off your ass Four!” Another crack and Black Two had blown the Brute’s ribcage wide open. As the alien fell, two more took its place, the aliens roaring their fury at the two Spartans as they descended down the hillside with some hundred more of their kind plus assorted grunts and jackals. Victor pushed himself up into a crouch pulling the M6D Magnum from where he’d stored it on his thigh and leveling it with the first of the apes to try and fire.
Two killed it first, but Four pivoted with his good arm and let the hand cannon punch one hole in the second brute’s jaw, and another clean through its thick skull. Dark red blood sprayed from both, and as he staggered to his feet, even more, took the dead’s place. What was the point of it? What were they still running for?
“Let’s go, let’s go!” There was no panic in her voice, which had become an alien emotion a long time ago, but there was an eagerness to it that betrayed her lingering hope. She took another Brute down with his rifle as he turned to stumble in her direction. Two was a better shot than he remembered, every Spartan was a sharpshooter, but Four had always been so busy perfecting his own craft that his teammates' own aptitude had gone largely unnoticed.
But his left arm was too mangled to handle the SRS-99 sniper rifle he’d wielded for over twenty years, and he'd had to trust her. Three would’ve been Victor’s first choice, but Three was dead, and One too. They’d killed those things, slim, armored bipeds that looked almost humanoid. They had been faster than anything he’d ever seen besides the Blue Bolt herself, wielded weapons powerful even by Covenant standards, and had been strong enough to tear up Four’s arm.
They were still dead though. Two of them for two of theirs didn’t feel like a fair trade, but Four had a hard time imagining Black One and Three would’ve wanted to go out any other way.
Black Two grabbed him by his shoulder and wrenched him behind cover as glowing spikes and barrages of plasma raked the ground around him, grabbing a magazine for the rifle off him as she did. The Covenant troops were swarming in, rushing past the boulder he’d hidden behind moments before, and then they were dying as the ground erupted beneath their feet.
Three had always insisted they lay out defensive perimeters, no matter how quick an op was meant to be. The one time he’d been right, and he wasn’t even there to rub Four’s nose in it. That part stung, ached even, but Black Four knew he didn’t have much time to worry about it.
“Once we’re on board I need you doing what you can to shed weight.” Two spoke at him like she was one of their instructors, and stopped only to rise and put a round through the throat of a heavily armored Brute that had survived the detonations.
“Stop it.” Four stared deep into her visor through his own.
“What do you mean stop it, we can make it!” She protested, defiant.
“Two, come on.”
“Don’t you do this to me!” There was the panic, the traces of fear, not of her own death, of for his, of the idea that it might only be her left. She clung to hope in the shape of the Condor dropship at the base of the hill nestled in an alcove, and that it might launch fast enough to escape what was coming. But speed wasn’t enough anymore, and Four knew she knew that.
Grunts were the first through the dusty haze where the explosives had only just cut the first wave of the Covenant advance to pieces, and in the distance, he heard the whine of Banshees on the horizon. Four leveled the sidearm clutched in his good arm and opened up, the blocky M6 thundering with each squeeze of the trigger.
“Four we have to go,”
“Two, check the clock.” She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him along without bothering to answer him. Black Four wasn’t afraid, wasn’t worried about what they’d leave behind.
The Banshees swept in fast and low, plasma cannons raking the ground and splashing against the Spartans as they cut overhead. Four grit his teeth and kept moving as the MJOLNIR’s shields flared and the force of the blast against his back sent him staggering forwards. She steadied him, and kept him upright as they dropped into the mouth of the cave that would take them to the secluded landing zone.
Or it might’ve taken her, at least. Four stopped at the entrance, dropped the empty magazine from the M6, and tucked the sidearm under the shoulder of his bad arm, struggling to slide in a fresh replacement.
“Enough Four, come on!” He didn’t answer her, instead, he slammed the last of the magazines home, and took the Magnum back into his hand.
“Four!” She barked as he turned away from her and the length of the cave. “Four, come on we can still make it, we ca-,”
“Roma, stop it.” They barely ever seemed to use their names anymore, Four remembered when Margaret said it had gotten so bad she thought of herself by ‘One’ rather than her own name, and Roma had agreed. Saying it seemed to stall her, maybe even crack the delusion.
“Then what, Victor? Just call it quits and fold?” Roma challenged him with a swell of frustration in her voice, precious seconds that had long since run out continuing to tick away. “Fuck that.”
“We did our job Roma, just got a little caught up on the extract.” Victor-101 gave a shrug and regretted it almost immediately as his left side felt as if it’d been set on fire at with the movement, but he kept it quiet. “If we were airborne now we’d still be thirty-three seconds too late and counting.”
Roma-143 stared at him, eyes boring into him from behind the ‘II’ emblazoned on the silver visor of her helmet, and tried to think of a way to still win, the way they always had. But this was winning. This was how it was always going to end.
“I’ve done the math, so have you.” The blast from the NOVA bomb they’d planted was going to make every glassing they’d ever witnessed pale in comparison. This world, whatever the Covenant called it, and the scores of ships that had arrived in its orbit after they had, were all going to be dust. If they hadn’t gotten caught up by those things, then maybe they’d have been spared that fate, but it just hadn’t worked out.
“What if we’re it? What if everyone else really is gone?” Operation SUNSPEAR was a last-ditch effort, a final act of defiance by humanity against the Covenant, they were only here because the end had come. The aliens had found Earth, and then communications had gone dark. The war was over, and they’d lost.
“Then they’re never gonna forget us. Splits and Apes are gonna talk about us like the boogeyman for centuries.” Victor’s HUD showed red dots approaching, so tightly packed that it was more wall of crimson closing on the solitary two yellow blips.
“Unless Grey gets all the credit,” Roma added. They hadn’t been the only Spartans sent on SUNSPEAR, but they’d been given the Jiralhanae world, whereas Grey had lucked out and been tasked to eradicate a splitjaw world.
“Unless Grey gets all the credit.” He agreed the wave of red growing closer. “Still, don’t want the bomb to get all the fun.” Victor tightened his grip around the M6, and dropped back a little farther into the cave and into cover. Roma followed cautiously.
“And what do you think you’re gonna do?” She asked as her head turned farther down the cave and then back to him.
“More than you apparently.” He grinned. Roma scoffed, dropping into a crouch and leveling his rifle with the entrance.
“No chance.” Victor felt something stir inside him at that, and he dragged two fingers over his visor as best as he could with the Magnum clutched in his hand. Roma chuckled and returned the gesture a deal more eloquently.
Victor remembered a day long past in the cool reprieve of a classroom, where Dejá had taught them about their namesakes, and their stand at the Hot Gates. She’d left out how that battle ended in their first lesson, but they’d learned in time. The cave wasn’t quite as grand a vista, but what capped off their last battle would be no less memorable.
The first Brute stepped into the entrance, and Black Team set out to surpass Thermopylae. They would hold for sixty seconds, and then, oblivion came for all.
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[[CMD: OPEN REPORT - OPERATION: SUNSPEAR - DEPLOYMENT REPORTS - SPARTAN BLACK]]
[[ENTER USER: CHAL492]]
[[ENTER PASSWORD: *******]]
//ACCESSING...//
//REQUEST LOADED: OPERATION: SUNSPEAR - SPARTAN BLACK DEPLOYMENT REPORT//
[[CMD: OPEN SECTION - AFTER ACTION REPORT / RESULTS ANALYSIS]]
//ACCESSING...//
//REQUEST LOADED: AFTER ACTION REPORT - RESULTS ANALYSIS//
SUBJECT: SUNSPEAR AAR, RESULTS ANALYSIS, REPORT AUTHOR - CODENAME: BLUE WEASEL
ANALYSIS: Black Team’s detonation of a NOVA Bomb on the Covenant world known as ‘Kreisac’ during Operation: SUNSPEAR would ultimately play a vital role in the continued survival of the human species. New intelligence has confirmed that the primarily Jiralhanae colony was being used as a staging ground for the faction known as the ‘Blood Covenant’.
This group, known to still be led by San Shyuum, had the potential to continue the Covenant proper given the massive amount of assets they had at their disposal prior to SUNSPEAR.
Black Team’s loss was a tremendous blow, no one could argue otherwise, but their sacrifice reduced the threat of a continued Covenant onslaught to nothing more than another band of warlords. More reclusive ones than most to be sure, but for all their mystery, the ‘Blood Covenant’ is still a broken shell destined to fade into nothing.
We have only Black Team to thank for that.