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Prodigal Son: Part 1
Date: 29 February 2004, 10:28 AM

Prodigal Son: SPARTAN 079 -Scott-

Chapter 1: To begin in the beginning.

The eye of the storm was coming, and flurry of the carbon storm was thinning, Spartan 079 knew his moment was approaching. He had been dug in for half a day, barely half a kilometer from the enemy encampment, his HUD flared with static from the storm. Inside the golden mask of his blacked out MJOLNIR armor he watched carefully, his hawkish eyes trained on the barely visible blue lights from the bivouac, in his mind he was going over his mission parameters, his hands perfectly still on the ground before him, holding the cables he had used to tie down his make shift camouflage.
This was the rebel encampment on the abandoned mining world Taunith II, a cold desolate world that long lost all of its indigenous life to a dying sun. For over a year and a half the rebel factions had harassed the mining corporations here until finally they had stolen enough, sold enough ore, and pilfered enough of the miners to barter their heavy weapons and put down the local governor's security force. The year was 2526, the fourth of February according to the military calendar, and the UNSC had commissioned the use of small tactical special operations groups to deal with all threats to the military industrial complex. The beginnings of a larger war had spurned massive consolidations of human resources, Scott knew why, he and his family knew why, they had been briefed by their mother, by their father.
The rebel faction was not what to be believed, they were a thorn in the side of the UNSC who had already lost too much in the very beginnings of the conflict that was ebbing away at the fears of every soldier it possessed. The horrors of the battles of the Harvest system campaigns had reached the ears of every man, woman, and child within the whole of human controlled space. In the military there was speculation, and confusion, but ultimately a massive call to order. Taunith was rich in titanium and fossil fuel deposits were readily massed on near the surface, despite its harsh environment and the fact that it was a dead rock in a back water system; it was a valuable dead rock.
In orbit, the small transports were waiting with his back up, when he had penetrated their defenses, when he had planted the charges and detonated their power plant, the ODST's would fall. With the storms raging their drop would be devastating; in the eye of the storm their pods would have at least a seventy percent chance of surviving. Odds that Colonel Abrams could accept, and would be more than willing to risk the lives of the Hell Jumpers in the operation. And with a carbon dust storm, no anti aircraft battery would ever be able to target the troops. The base would be over run, the materials safeguarded, and the UNSC would be able to commission ore processing and ship construction. Scott was never told any of these things, these were merely the thoughts that ran through his mind during his long reconnaissance missions, analyzing every angle as his body and mind went a million directions at once. His psych profile read like a deranged Smart AI, but he was still invaluable to the UNSC, he was one of the few surviving Spartan II's, and to his credit he was damned effective as a soldier, even if he wasn't wired in the conventional way.
In truth Scott had always been different, but that was his gift in the SPARTAN II program, his reaction time and analytical abilities that had made him a perfect saboteur and infiltration specialist. And with the implants and enhancements of the surgical alterations of his body he began to see life and his duties as a soldier in many different ways. Scott focused on the permutations of his mission parameters; there were a hundred different ways to accomplish this mission, with a hundred different after effects. He could enter now, revealed or not and he knew he would personally kill every single soldier in the hardened rebel bunker. The first thought in his head was to use plan beta, to allocate their nuclear arsenal and remote detonate it, but that was the secondary option. His orders were to first take down the generators, kill their satellite uplinks before the eye of the storm widened over their communications array; let the ODSTs do the killing.
He crawled on his belly through the loose black sand, one hand holding the cables to the lead sheet concealing him, the other dragging the massive half ton frame of his armored body. Inch by inch he was moving closer to his goal, the blue lights were becoming more concrete in his visor, the static on his sensors fading, systems rebooting. Within twenty minutes his mission clock began, his fourteen minute window timer ticking off to the left of his HUD, he was already inside their perimeter, following navigational directions from satellite photos, seeing the humongous exhaust stack of the fusion generator buried in the bunker. The generator problem was simple, close the vents, make sure hey could not be opened regardless of what controls were being used. The rebels would panic, and shut down the reactor, going to auxiliary power, plant demolition charges by their launch doors and they will never be able to get the machinery out to open them again. The base is then assaulted, a swarm of troops invades, and acceptable losses are at thirty percent, with a mission survival imperative for the SPARTAN II. If only they'd just let him plant the nuke, he could finish the operation without a single marine loss. Scott grit his teeth, now was the time when his active mind shifted from the analytical debate and after thought to cold efficiency. It always happened this way, as if the clouds parted when his adrenal glands opened up, he saw many options now, and decided on the best coarse.
The first sentry never saw him coming, his hand snatched the man into the leeward shadows, and they walked on set paths marked by steel cables that they were tethered to. The man's communication beacon flared and then went silent as Scott crushed his helmet. The lifeless body was easy enough to conceal in the darkness, he moved on. The encampment held three main structures, the main entrance to the bunker that both concealed and housed the anti-aircraft batteries as well as their primary generators. The southern exit of the bunker's hangar, and more importantly the northern entrance to the personnel barracks. His primary threat would be the troops pouring out in response to his presence, but single troops could always be eliminated, these were rebel forces, not highly trained, and motivated by profiteering.
The second sentry saw him but only because he allowed him to, Scott charged across the courtyard and snatched the man from his cable as the wind flared. His strength, augmented by the suit crushed the man's chest as he slammed him to the ground. The activity lights of the vac-suit faded off and Scott began his slow approach to the exhaust tower. Looming over the base, the oddly orange and black tower was barely eighteen meters tall, but stood like an Athenian obelisk in the face of the stunted cement barracks buildings that sprouted from the ground of the underground bunker. His mission clock read ten minutes reaming until the ODSTs drop, pulling his equipment pack he removed the first of four detonation charges. All of the sudden flood lights of the base filled the swirling sky with harsh unnatural blue light, Scott was exposed. The white light of the barracks doors behind him filled the courtyard. His hands swung the rifle from under his equipment pack, and his legs carried him faster than he anticipated. The darkness parted by the unnatural blue splintered with muzzle flashes. Scott's mind shut down, his instincts took over.

Prodigal Son: Part 2
Date: 3 March 2004, 8:35 AM

Chapter 2: The way I live my life
February 6th, 2525 standard military calendar: UNSC Assault Cruiser Yamamoto's Turn

Fairchild watched the holo-projection light the darkened briefing room with images from the SPARTAN's helmet cam. Fourteen men charged, and fourteen men fell from precision accuracy shooting. The lights of the bunker were next to go, and indicators showed grenades being thrown into the waiting cement cavern. Perfect crowd control, Colonel Fairchild thought, Halsey's freaks really knew their stuff. The footage continued, and the camera moved in doors, a blackened serrated knife spreading thick ichors in the darkened hallways. Gunfire, chaos, and then finally the ODSTs arriving early to the drop zone, there was clearly a botched execution here. The Spartan had an air tight case, and Fairchild knew it, he was not pleased by this. The mission had been botched, and although the rebel base had been destroyed, the use of nuclear arsenal had rendered the facility unusable; it would take a full year to reestablish a processing facility now on Taunith II. A delay that would cost many lives in the months to come. Still the evidence was there, and the worst of Dr. Halsey's breed had still accomplished his mission with reckless efficiency, this one should have failed, should have been cut down in the infiltration, his marks were the worst amongst all of the Spartans rated by ONI.
Fairchild turned as the remainder of the staff sat in the darkness eyeing the projection. There was thirty more minutes to play, it would entail the deaths of over fifty six rebel soldiers and commanding officers within the bunker as the Spartan entered the facility. The room Fairchild sat in was arranged as an inverted V with two long tables angled together to narrow towards the far side of the room. Behind the apex of the formation projectors sat to provide visual data. Before them in between the two rows stood the officer in question, Petty Officer Spartan 079, no name, just number. Dressed in his Whites as per military review, he was young but a giant in that room. Taller by a head than any of the ONI personnel that were eyeing his performance now, he stood with a rigorous defiance. Fairchild didn't like him, he had heard rumors of the program, they had slaughtered marines in the training of these monsters. It didn't sit right with him, sending good soldiers to their deaths just to train other soldiers deemed more valuable by the higher ups. Spartan 079 disgusted him.

Scott stood with rigorous attention, the meeting was to give a final evaluation to his performance abilities and to verify Dr.Halsey's and Chief Mendez's evaluation of him. He had been fighting against the system since he was old enough to enter combat drills, since he asked why it what the difference was between incapacitate and kill. Scott felt the twinge of defiance within him, but also the utter loyalty that all the Spartan's felt, this was his life, his way of life. Not his job, but his purpose in life, all of humanity depended upon his brothers and sisters now. His role in the UNSC was substantially different now that the covenant had arrived, and he saw no error in his mind with the stark contrast his former life as a soldier had before this. Project Mjolnir had changed that enough for him. He was a Spartan and knew he was a pawn of a greater power, there was no question of it, but now he had a true purpose, this was less a matter of moral relevancy now and more in his mind an imperative of survival. He knew he had changed again in these last few months, he was once again the pride of the navy, and he was once again the soldier they had trained, created, and perfected. In his mind he didn't understand any more, but the guilt was gone, the afterthought was gone. He didn't care about the implications of his missions, so long as he was there on the front lines. So long as he was with his family.

The film continued as Fairchild reviewed Spartan 079's confidential ONI file one last time, his psych profile was all over the board. At times it seemed as a small child he had been incredibly adaptive, a perfect just like every other Spartan. Physically he was strong, grew fast, reacted faster, and became smart and eager to learn with a voracious appetite for knowledge. In combat training he was adept and vicious, but that was training. It was actual missions that showed a hesitation for him to kill, that were what set him apart, he took more beatings and hurt himself more than those who opposed him. He was the last of them to kill. But worse yet, was the psych profile of him after he had killed, it was almost as if he excelled it, almost too much. Spartan 079 was proof enough of the dangers of Halsey's sick experiment to make perfect soldiers with no morality, no guilt to restrain them in combat.
As he grew older though the psych profiles changed, it seemed the pangs of guilt, emotions across the board, though smart and adaptable like all the other Spartan IIs, he kept changing. He learned the skills to survive, but did not stand out, and the more he was punished the more he defied. And then worst of all, he survived the implants, making him irreplaceable. The implants changed him yet again, Dr.Halsey attributed his wild psych evaluations to his intelligence, suggestions of him using the visitations with ONI specialists as a means to test his logic, perhaps he thought of them as another trial. Halsey was full of shit, Fairchild thought, the kid was damaged, the whole program had ruined him. Born to kill, steeped in innocent blood, ripe with guilty consciences and closed doors, this was exactly what was wrong with the Navy these days. There was no more honor.
Fairchild's hands felt the smooth metal of the desk and looked up amid the blue glow of the mission report, some of the ONI brass there were actually looking pleased with Spartan 079's performance. Colonel Adrian Yu actually seemed to be smiling his crinkled face into a fleshy knot as the Spartan's hands rigged the nuclear weapon in its case while at the same time shooting three guards that attempted to flush him out with automatic weapons fire. The Spartan still stood there at rigid attention, his blue eyes and short cropped dark hair as hard as his demeanor. Finally the mission file was completed, amid a Pelican drop ship's cabin closing in around the camera, the lights in the room raised.
"Most impressive Spartan 079" a voice to Fairchild's left commented. "Tell me though, how would you rate the performance of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers on this exercise?"
"I'm afraid, sir, I have insufficient data at this time to evaluate the insertion procedures of the ODSTs sir. It is my personal feelings though sir, that the jump window was prematurely executed, and that personnel loss could have been reduced given more rigorous adherence to the mission clock as per my original briefing."
The kid was smart, too smart. Fairchild grimaced listening to the Spartan bullshit his way through the proceeding. Those marines had been some of the bravest men he had ever commanded, and there were no other options, that damned wind was picking up and Abrams would have still dropped those boys into the tempest no matter what. Secretly he wished he had known who had called the drop, no matter what thirty men and women were dead, by gunfire or by the ensuing blast from detonating a stolen nuclear weapon. This Spartan had killed a lot of men. "How do you justify the use of the rebel weapons of mass destruction in the accomplishment of your mission Spartan 079, were you not given explicit instructions to prepare for the ODST's insertion and leave the facility intact?" A voice to Fairchild's right spoke up.
"That was the alpha priority mission parameters Sir," the Spartan replied without hesitation, how far ahead was this freak thinking Fairchild wondered. "With the corruption of their drop zone by the increased troop presence and radio silence, I prepared to undertake beta parameters."
"Are you aware that the entirety of the Hell-jumper's team was lost in the ensuing blast Spartan 079?" Another ONI brass interrogated.
"It was my understanding that the entire team had already been lost to enemy forces or failed drop execution sir. I refrained from activating the nuclear device until I was certain that all alpha priority parameters had been compromised. Sir."
"Do you feel you executed your mission to the best of your ability Spartan 079?" Fairchild's harsh voice spoke before his brain could stop it, he knew he had done the one thing he didn't wish to do, the Spartan could now defend himself.

Scott stood stoically; he eyed the men and women from behind their desks. They were all part of ONI, they were all attached to the evaluation of Dr.Halsey's work in section 3. "I do not sir," he replied thinking quickly, he already knew how to protect his brothers and sisters, his mother.
"Would you care to explain yourself Spartan 079?" the voice came from another faceless ONI colonel scrutinizing him.
"Sir, I know I could have accomplished this mission with zero casualties had it been ordered. The failing sir was in the Orbital Troop drop that compromised my mission's alpha priorities, there was no option to control the enemy troop presence there once detected, the base was too hot, so I blew it, Sir." He finished his statement, and felt their hard eyes on him. He was being honest like Dr.Halsey had insisted he be so many years ago, he knew he was in a no win scenario, the worst missions he could get. Someone sacrificed thirty marine lives to put a black mark on his record, to mar the face of the SPARTAN II project. "The mission, sir, was botched, on purpos. I didn't kill those men, the rebel soldiers did. I did my best to ensure that no other marines would die taking that bunker sir."
"You are dismissed Spartan 079," he heard Colonel Fairchild's angry voice hang in the air as it filled the rooms with it's wrecked baritone, "you are of course well aware that any and all information pertaining to this mission is classified and not to be repeated to anyone anywhere, even to Dr.Halsey or your fellow Spartans."
"Sir, yes Sir." Was all Scott said as he turned and marched out of the room. He knew he hadn't dodged the bullet, only made the shooter adjust his lead for a second longer.

Fairchild watched the screens as the ONI brass left the room, many of them had already written their report during the mission debriefing, some were impressed, some wanted him for their own purposes, some were working for higher powers. Fairchild despised these men he worked with, he was eager to get back to Reach, feeling too confined in the tight hallways of the Assault Cruiser. Too close to these surreptitious bastards, he thought to himself, why did I ever accept that invitation? Fairchild grimaced remembering all his ambition had cost him, selling his soul as a navy man fifteen years ago. And all he had seen and done disgusted him, this Spartan had just as much blood on his hands though, the only difference was that the boy had never chosen this life.
Fairchild hated him already, Spartan 079, Abrams, Dr.Halsey, his superior officers. What they were doing was wrong, there was no greater justification for this, alien menace or not. Covenant invasion fleet or not, they were wasting lives, taking men and women and sending them to be slaughtered. His conscience was too heavy now after fifteen years of this work, he was good at his job, simply too good, he was invaluable and always sent to do the wet work. This Spartan would have the same fate as him, everyone knew the program's potential, and that was why so many forces wanted to deride the project. They all wanted a super soldier of their own, and now Spartan 079 was their prime candidate.
His psych evaluations were the perfect precedent for removal from the project, once removed they would take him somewhere safe, hidden, and reprogram him. Make him into the murdering automatons that served ONI's section one. Fairchild felt his insides move, remembering the image of the sentry's helmet popping like an egg shell under the Spartan's grip. Who knows who would be the target of ONI section one's super assassin if they got him. With that in mind Fairchild knew what he had to do.

Three days later on reach, ONI HQ received a glowing report from Colonel Richard M. Fairchild detailing the success and adaptability of Spartan 079. He described the man's intuition and abilities exactly on par with Dr.Halsey's evaluation of the boy in the soldier's husk. Fairchild enjoyed his one penance for his many sins, a twinge of guilt removed from his conscience. It still did nothing for the ghosts that came before him that night though, remembering the men and women he had ordered to their deaths, the darkened memories always coming to the fore front of his mind as he sipped his bourbon, staring out the rain slicked window. Fairchild hated himself; he hated what he had let himself become: a pawn.

Prodigal Son: Part 3
Date: 6 March 2004, 6:14 PM

Part 3: What the dead tell me.
2536, March 10, Military calendar, Aboard Assault Cruiser Romulus; high orbit over planet Uripedes.

Scott had fought the covenant before, all of his Spartan family had. Scott was the only one who hated waiting before the mission though; he wanted to be on the ground with his rifle in hands, taking aim at elites and grunts. They knew the covenant had two crashed ships on this planet; their job was to secure the wreckage and remove any resistance that remained. This mission felt unreal to Scott, the ships had been gutted stem to stern by MAC guns from four different heavy cruisers. There wouldn't be anything left to salvage, still he followed orders. Looking up he saw John outlining the teams, Scott already knew he would be on Blue team, moving forward, crawling through the wreckage and doing recon. Uther was to his right, checking his rifle's scope alignment, satisfied he stowed his gear. "Our drop is in five, Red team, Blue team, Green team I want you loaded and ready to go two minutes ago." The Spartans snapped to attention and rushed from their ready room to the launch bay, Scott followed suit, and he wanted to be on that planet. There was a mission to fulfill, he had orders, and like it or not he was going to prove them all wrong about him.

The night sky was pinpricked with stars, the looming blue world before them filled the view screen as the three pelicans raced towards the atmosphere. "Five Five five, this is Deadbeat, we are on schedule to drop alpha zulu niner four." The warrant officer's gruff voice came over the broad band, another mistake Scott counted. In the pelican was blue team with him, the first to the closest LZ, the first to make visual contact. Errol had the lead, flanked by Colin, and Julia with the detonation packs, Scott listened to the banter of the pilots, hardened veterans or not they should have been quiet right now. If there were any covenant left alive down there in the wreckage they were going to know someone was coming for them. Their most hated enemies, Scott pulled the breech back on his rifle, feeling the smooth clean titanium action snap into place.

"Roger that command," the comm links in their helmets spoke to them, the pilot was nearing the wreckage, "alright blue team, we are at alpha zulu niner four! You have four clicks between one downed covenant war bird and your metal asses, hit the dirt boys because this is where you get off!" The warrant officer shouted with glee as the boarding doors slid open, five meters above the burned scarred ground below, dust and smoke swirling from the pelican's exhaust vents. "MOVE MOVE MOVE!" Scott heard Errol's hard voice echo through his comm., the Spartans already moving out, he acknowledged as he jumped from his seat and threw himself out of the landing craft.

The broken dirt clouded beneath his half ton frame as he landed in a crouch, green arrows in his HUD indicated the other Spartans on blue team. Errol's voice received orders, and he relayed John's words: "alright blue team, Scott you're with me thirty meter spread, eyes open, over lapping fire fields from the dirt. Julia, Colin keep a half click back and low, we want to deliver that ordinance intact." Scott knew without those demo packs there would be no easy entrance to the covenant wreck's more protected interior, or at least what survived of it.

Scott ran with Errol over the broken terrain, leaping the chasms and sliding down the hills, all the while keeping exactly thirty meters between him and his commanding officer, thermal readings from fly bys and the orbiting Romulus's scanners showed the plains to be devoid of life, but small movements around the primary wreck to have survivors. When they had landed the bulbous purple half shell of the covenant ship had barely seemed a small hill in the distance, but now it loomed over the craterous crevasse it had dragged into the planet. Though scarred and pockmarked, and clearly with a gaping whole dominating one side of the massive alien vessel, it still seemed largely intact. Errol saw them first and transferred the data to Scott, "contact, back me up, they're not injured in the least, four elites. Draw a bead and wipe them out Scott." His orders came through, Scott acknowledged, his transmission light winked at him in his HUD as he raced up the slope.

Scott's body slammed into the ground, and he reached behind him to the under slung sniper rifle. On his belly, his hands snapped the supports out from under the long barrel, his HUD linked with the rifle's high magnification scopes. Amid the billowing smoke coming from the downwind purple hulk blue plasma flashes flared, the scope zoomed in, and Scott searched the origins of the blast, switching to his thermal optic scope he could see the plasma rifles overheating, and the white outlines of the Elites brandishing them.

Scott drew a bead and let loose with two shots, the first white outline of an Elite fell. Two more cracks from his rifle and another down, Errol's acknowledgement light winked on, two more from Julia and Colin. Scott had stopped to reload when suddenly hiss motion tracker warning flared; he spun on to his back bringing the rifle to the air barely in time to see the blurring blue plasma blade slice down where his head had been a moment before. He fired blindly towards the nothingness of a camouflaged alien, hitting nothing, the blade arced again towards him, but Scott anticipated the move and rolled away, snapping his body to his feet.

The HUD's thermal scope wasn't reading right, only the plasma blade was showing, but now Scot could see his assailant's proximity, and he was on his feet. Without seeing the Elite's feet though, he had no way of knowing where the next arc of the blade would go, this was not a hand to hand scenario he could win, the clip of the rifle was empty, it would take him precisely three seconds to bring his assault rifle to bear and switch off the safety, and given the speed of the camouflaged Elite, that would be enough time to close and sever the rifle from his hands.

Scott backpedaled quickly, his hand moving to his side, the elite was charging fast upon him. Five meters, the blade was cocked for a high downward slash. Four meters, Scott's hand upon the hilt of the combat knife concealed on the small of the back of his armor. The catch release ejected the blade to his hand. Three meters, it would be less then two seconds. Two meters, Scott threw himself backwards onto his back. One meter, the blade was slashing down upon him, its residual electromagnetic pulse causing a slight distortion in his HUD.

The blackened titanium blade whipped up into the air, the alien was slicing for his head in a lightning fast arc. Scott's own blade however, slashed into the unprotected hilt of the plasma blade, the unshielded hand was sliced cleanly through as well as the plasma blade's generator, power supply and all. The blade instantly faded and the invisible alien, not able to react to the sudden change fell upon him, over come by his own motion. Scott felt the bleeding stump of the alien's hand impact upon his chest, his free arm came up and an augmented metal fist landed upon the alien's throat, his camouflage generator was failing now, and with a frustrating last gasp it gave up on bending the light wave lengths around the red armored Covenant Elite.

The Covent flew upwards clutching its neck, fleeting gurgling gasps escaping his split jaw. Its eyes were enflamed with surprise and fury, Scott didn't care to wait anymore, his comm. to Errol was undoubtedly filled with orders and requests, the others would be regrouping without him. The alien was on its hind quarters, bleeding, Scott snap rolled himself to his feet, and buried the knife to the hilt into the creature's face. Remorseless Scott scanned the surroundings, no other threats on his motion detector. The purple behemoth still loomed to the north. Plasma fire to the north east indicated the remained of blue team assailing the highest ridge, their best path to the alien hull perched upon the broken ground.

Retrieving his sniper rifle and cueing the scope to the action he saw them there, Errol covering Colin and Julia. Julia was spraying a team of jackals with automatic weapons fire, she was carrying a heavier machine gun, belt fed from a massive ammo drum on her back. Scott hadn't noticed her arsenal in the pelican, he surprised himself that he had omitted that detail, four elites were unloading their plasma weapons upon Colin's position, his hard cover nothing more than a blackened sandstone boulder. Scott was already running, leaping between the chasms wrought upon the land.

Scott switched to his assault rifle, he had twenty more meters between him and the rest of blue team, and now he was flanking the covenant. Ten grunts, sixteen jackals, four elites. The odds were bad for them against the shielded alien troops, the first of four grunts were now in range, oblivious to his presence. Four three round bursts fired, the twelve rounds embedded themselves into grunts. Two fell to the bullet rounds, the remainders exploded as their breathing apparatuses were severed and ignited. Balls of blue flame emitted from their corpses alerting the covenant to Scott's closing. The grunts scattered, ducking for cover as his assault rifle passed over them. His better targets were the jackals, with their energy shields to Julia's machine gun.

Errol was igniting an Elite's shields with his sniper rifle, within a second the large alien fell spewing a purple ichors from its chest. The other elites were focusing on Colin, but one turned in time to see its comrade die, shouting in an alien tongue. The blue plasma raced from its plasma rifle towards Errol, who could only try to duck backwards in time. He wasn't fast enough though, the first shot took his plasma rifle, melting and fusing it, its chamber bubbled as the rounds exploded, spraying Errol's armor with the molten steel of the weapon. Errol was thrown back, his chest plate and arm smoldering.

Scott's assault rifle barked its deadly payload into the backs of the jackals just as he saw Errol's weapon explode in his hands. In his HUD all of the squad lights were blinking, radioing messages to John, to red team, to any who would listen. Three of the jackals were dead; soon the covered grunts would poke their heads out and start shooting their plasma pistols. Scott ran straight through the fray, dropping two grenades, a meter apart. Between him and the elites were a pair of grunts, Scott swatted them out of the way as the concussion from the grenades erupted behind him. He was less than nine meters from the elites, and the one that had shot Errol was furiously bringing his weapon to Scott's fore.

The weapon's deadly charges raced in the air but went wild, Scott weaved leaping to the side and shooting four three round bursts. The counter on his rifle was getting low, eight rounds remained, and the alien's blue blur around him told of his shield's remaining strength. Suddenly the alien's weapon stopped dead, its glowing green fangs turning blue, the weapon expanded and split, releasing superheated gas. Scott continued racing towards the alien and brought his gun's butt upon the creature.

The Elite's forearm deflected the weapon in a circling motion, dropping the overheated plasma rifle and seizing the Spartan with a powerful clawed hand. The grip felt like steel, even through the plate of his MJOLNIR armor, the alien was smart; Scott was encumbered and had but one free hand. It shouted in an alien tongue and quickly pivoted using its weight to swing Scott off balance to his right. Then Scott saw them, the other Elites were turning from Colin to unload their plasma rifles into him point blank. His mind shut down, and he watched himself tear into the Elite holding him, his strength augmented by the suit as his hand shot up from its attempt to brace himself away from the Elite, to the Elite's throat, his grip was strong and nearly collapsed the neck of the blue armored foe. The alien's eyes bulged and its shield crackled stressing but not being able to resist the small focused pressure of his hand. The Elite felt the constricting pressure on his neck, even through his now failing energy shield.

The Elites to his back had their guns trained on the falling SPARTAN, but Scott was falling with an accomplice now, hitting the ground with a mighty thud from his half ton mass and the weight of the Elite on top of him. The plasma fire leapt from their rifles into the Elite's shielded back, one blue blur exploded on the ground next to this head, the move had bought him a second, but now he was on his back, encumbered by a rifle and a body, without a free hand. His adrenalin pumped, and anger flowed in him, defiance hatred, his whole life was there in his mind.

Scott saw purple blood spray everywhere though, as his anger took him over. The Elites were cut down in a hail of gun fire. Three explosions shook his armor and his motion tracker went hay wire. He pushed the body of the elite off himself and rolled to his stomach, quickly trying to assess the situation, his gun was facing forward, eight rounds still in the chamber. Everything was going slower now, and with gritted teeth he pushed up off the ground, the Elites bodies were just now hitting the ground one of the plasma rifles looked like a blackened exploded boiler, his body was scorched and bleeding.

Alien bodies were everywhere; Julia looked at Scott her heavy machine gun's three barrels still spinning, smoke rising from the weapon's chamber. Errol was on his feet, two pistols in hand, blackened oblong streaks of cooling steel pockmarked his dark olive green armor. He was breathing heavily, and Scott thought he saw blood oozing from the joint of is arm. "Status CO?" Scott asked on the comm. channel to Errol.

"Resistance neutralized, Red Team is coming in on our vector, they encountered a similar patrol, John slaughtered them all." Errol replied, his comm. light blinking on Scott's HUD.

Scott turned to the slope of the ridge going up to the hull of the crashed Covenant ship. Intel streamed into his HUD again, translation software decrypted the information. "Downed alien craft designated Silence of Fate." Julia spoke over the team comm. link. "Eta formations, Colin, bring the detonation packs; look for the hatch they came out of, Scott guard his rear, Julia, and you're with me we're holding this bit of dirt until Red team meets up here."

Scott charged up the ridge and found a three meter gap between the ship and the end of the tortured sandstone that supported their weight. He leapt to the hull and began running towards the bubbled purple hatch that lay before him. Colin's massive thump behind him signified his arrival. "You see it?" Scott asked over the comm., scanning with his rifle, his adrenalin was subsiding. His ammo counter was low; he ejected the clip and slammed a new one in place.

"I see it." Colin's hard baritone echoed in his helmet. The larger SPARTAN ran passed Scott, the pack of explosives slung over his shoulder, his assault rifle tracing patterns across the hull. "If there are more contacts in the ship, they'll know we're coming through this hatch. Primary entrance and exit protocol." Scott stopped over the hatch catching up to Colin, turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees around the ship, back to his squad member who had already begun to extricate the explosive devices from the long black bag.

"Solutions?" Colin asked looking up at him.

"Detonate somewhere else. Find alternative entrance. Find alternative breeching method." Scott said absent mindedly taking note of his ammo count on his belt, his two grenades, pistol with two clips, one slightly bent titanium knife, one more clip armor piercing rounds, one empty sniper rifle, two rounds without a clip to load them in. Things were looking grim, they needed another solution.

"Errol, where is red team?" Scott radioed his squad leader.

"ETA three minutes." Errol replied.

"Any heat down there?" Scott asked.

"Nothing, it's quiet, we've set up make shift hardcover. What's your breech status?" Errol sounded short of breath, plasma burns were rough, but the SPARTAN wouldn't forget his mission or his team.
"Negative breech," Scott said, an angry snarl curling around his face, there was too much uncertainty here, but they had a job to do. He looked to Colin who had placed the charges, and doing something he knew he shouldn't, nodded to his teammate. Ten seconds later, the ship shook with a dull thud as the alien metal sheered from the force of the shaped charges planted around it. Scott peered in, there was nothing to fear inside, everything that was still alive, he'd kill. He and Colin dropped into the darkness of the ruined frigate, his mind racing, his heart pounding, his assault rifle spitting its deadly barbs into the aliens that remained. He had orders. Neutralize the covenant on this dead hulk, whether he liked it or not. He liked it.

Prodigal Son: Part 4
Date: 29 March 2004, 12:20 AM

"Every candidate shines now and then Doctor, I've seen them all at their worst and best." Mendez replied.

"But how long has it been since you've seen any others perform below the basic standards?" She replied.

"At least a year and a half, that was until 079 began his decline." Mendez spoke, standing up. "If you're done with him Doctor, I need to return him to his squad for disciplinary functions."

"Don't punish him Chief." Halsey said, pushing her glasses up from the brim of her nose. It came to her then that Scott wasn't acting alone, his academics, the fluctuations in the program, everything that she had considered possible threats to the experiment were coming together. The SPARTAN II candidates were learning faster than anticipated, the program was working; they were taking to their training well, too well. The problem didn't lie within the boy, it lay within the program itself, the teachers would have to adapt to their students.

"Begging your pardon ma'am, but you charged me with the task of turning these children into soldiers, and I am not about to allow dissention within my ranks." Mendez spoke plainly and angrily.

"Punish them all, Scott has been testing us, testing the rules, they all have. They're learning, and they're trying to be subtle about it." Halsey sighed and realized now why he was the one who was caught, why he was the one who was giving her trouble. Halsey knew Scott was smart, his appetite for knowledge and experimentation voracious, but she had never considered before how his own demeanor had made him stand out among the children. So much that even they noticed it, and the recognized it's potential. Stealing a crate of food by yourself was reckless, stupid, he could never have smuggled the whole thing back to their encampment by himself. There were others, and most probably he was either their diversion, or their way of evaluating the risks of such an act.

"I don't think I follow your logic Ma'am," Mendez said, his cross brow turning to the data screens.

"They chose him to make that mistake, to get caught. They wanted us to have someone we would have a hard time evaluating, to have us lay blame, to see what they can slip past us. Punish them all, we need to update our curriculum, perhaps something more challenging, with a more rigorous indoctrination of military protocol." Halsey looked at the Marine standing over her as she spoke, noticing his uncomfortable glare.

"Are you saying that we've overlooked something Doctor? Created a flaw in our candidates this early in the program?" Mendez asked, his mind examining his options.

"No I'm saying that we've been successful to date, but that it is time we give them something more meaningful to hold on to. To ensure their loyalty we have to give them that which they never had: choice." She said feeling her own conscience pang at the mention of choice.
"And how exactly am I to give them a choice that will ensure their loyalty Doctor?" Mendez asked.

"Punish them all, either they all accept responsibility or he goes. Offer to them to save him, they work as a team, and now it's time to give them something to be proud of. Give them the Navy, but to accept it is to take responsibility. Soldiers have to have something to fight for. Perhaps, Doctor, now is the time to teach them the value of their service to Earth." Halsey felt a greater sense of woe in her, this boy was causing change in her program, but she knew it wasn't just him, it was all of them. He was merely the harbinger of the true implications of all this. Doing these things to children changed them, they were never normal. And now they were in between the beginning as raw unprocessed civilian children and the final process of making them into something never seen before by humanity in all of its wars.

"I think I see where you're going Doctor, perhaps it's not such a bad sign after all. They'll take their punishment by choice. The boy will be reined in." Mendez said, picking up his clip board. "I'll follow your instructions Doctor, but in my own way."

"I'll trust your prudence Chief," Halsey replied, standing, "I'll be making my report to ONI on the matter with acknowledgement of the incident as the result of your adaptive combat training's influence."

"The boy made a mistake, he's only human. Discipline will be maintained though." Mendez finished leaving the observation room with a great deal of dissatisfaction within him for the result of the meeting. To introduce choice to the candidates would be difficult, to be a natural thing for them would infer that they had some amount of control, and this early in the training could result in insubordinate soldiers later in key battles.

The next few days the squad went without food or sleep, they survived. On the fourth day Scott was reintroduced, the children were fed, and Mendez cleared his conscience. He spoke to them as they sat rigid in their seats of the auditorium. "Yours is a greater purpose, yours is to be the finest warriors ever birthed by humans. This purpose however, this mission, this challenge is only to be chosen. We have trained and taught you until now to be able to serve, but now we see that one of you has lost sight of this goal. To serve all of humanity, to protect all of humanity, to ensure peace and protect Earth and all of the sons and daughters that have spread throughout the galaxy, you must have pride, honor, dedication, and above all else duty.

"The duty of a savior is that of those who serve with me in the UNSC. And I offer you now to join us, you have proven yourselves in every test, every single one of you is truly extraordinary, but we will not have you if you cannot see our greater purpose. Ours is a life of sacrifice, but we do so, we fight, we bleed to save others. To protect the weak and ensure peace, I ask of you now, to step forward if you will undertake this goal, this purpose, and this mission." The boy was in front of the group now, out of uniform, in a grey jumpsuit, separated. His cold features stared at the ground.

"But do not take this in light consideration. The UNSC doesn't want those who forget their friends, or their obligations. Candidate 079 disobeyed direct orders and violated military law, abandoning you his squad when you most needed him. He will be removed, as will any whoever repeats his actions in any form whatsoever." Mendez waited as the lesson was driven in. "Soldiers fight, cowards run."

"Cowards never win sir." John spoke up standing and looking the taller Chief in the eyes, "but we'll take him sir, and whatever you have for us." The boy was strong and defiant, strange that Halsey was so endeared to him and yet so unfavorable to 079 despite both of their achievements.

"It's not that easy squad leader, Candidate 079 has breached military protocol on several major infractions, and he is a liability to you and your squad."

"Sir, Candidate 079 is an asset to us, and I accept full responsibility for his actions." John responded his voice was firm.

Scott watched the drama unfold before him, he knew their test had failed, but he hadn't anticipated this. Their real test had been to see if they could penetrate the computers in the officer's club, gain information to assist them in acquiring supplies, but he'd been caught. He'd learned his lesson, they all had been punished for days on end, and for all intents and purposes he didn't see any possibility of it ending. Inside though, he reveled at it, it was a new challenge, something new to see and experience. But Mendez's words were hitting home with John he could tell, they were discussing their future. Not just the future of John and the Chief, but all of heir futures.

Scott felt odd feelings inside him, anger, resentment, frustration, exultation, pride, reverence. Remembering the warriors he'd seen in Deja's classroom, remembering all the tactics he'd learned, how much he loved being out on a mission, that feeling of supreme competition, life and death. But Mendez wasn't talking about that any more, it wasn't like a game, there were more people at stake. He remembered the bonding, and looking at Uther and Errol he felt a familiarity. They were all he had, this was all he had, it meant everything to him, but he had never known what it meant to others.

Mendez was speaking to them again, and finally he told them that their future would only be the Navy, through the UNSC. They had a choice to make. John didn't seem to have a problem with the implications; Scott already knew he couldn't say no. This was what he wanted; this was the life he led. Some are born to sacrifice. Some need it. He couldn't wrap his head around the concept, but in his mind he felt a righteous anger inside of him, and then he realized what Mendez had been trying to give him when he punished him, when he punished the squad. He looked to John and he understood, they couldn't say no, they were soldiers. And they had pride.

Prodigal Son: Part 5
Date: 29 March 2004, 12:41 AM

Part: 5 Hatred Within
2536, March 10, Military calendar, Location unconfirmed within downed Covenant Cruiser; surface of planet Euripides.
The darkened interior of the crushed ship bent around him like a surreal claustrophobic nightmare, but Scott continued on. He was fifty meters from the entrance breech now, and he had found a host of dead alien bodies along his way, but nothing of use. The halls were bent and burnt here, as if still shuddering under the massive pull of a star's gravity, caught between the heavens and earth. Lights flickered ahead, the power plants must not have all been destroyed in the conflict, although gutted from it's prow to its aft, the beast refused to die.

Descending into the bowels of the felled Covenant cruiser caused his mind to race, his heart to quicken. He felt the rush of danger and unknown threats overcoming him, his adrenal glands pulsing, filling his body with chemicals, his thyroid implant fully accelerating his body. This was the addiction he felt in the cagey metal frame of his MJOLNIR armor, enveloped completely by the peak of human technology he was the perfect weapon, and here, alone on the battlefield his humanity escaped him. Here in the collapsed and ruined corridors of an alien battle craft as he trudged ever closer to an inevitable conflict he forgot the distractions of his life, the complications and disturbing elements of his training and the failing war against the covenant. Scott felt enthralled as his mind shut down and his instincts took over. In a few hours though, he knew he would be extracted, and he would remember, his mind would begin to analyze his service again.

Hidden amongst the other SPARTAN IIs in their private quarters, he would remember the faces of all they had killed. The alien tongues screaming their defiance as the butt of his rifle jumped back into his shoulder, the way their thick purple fluids exploded from their bodies. He was a killer; in his mind he knew nothing else. He knew they had been trained, shaped, honed to be killers. John believed in their missions, their leaders looked to be the saviors of humanity. Scott didn't know what he was, but he remembered killing both humans and covenant alike in his short life. It was hard to reconcile in his mind, despite the mindless slaughter he had seen the covenant troops direct upon a hundred different human settlements. Their massive fleets burning civilians and military personnel alike, letting their plasma cannons bombard and burn whole worlds away.

Scott hated those brief moments of contemplation respite, wishing to understand his life, at one moment completely enveloped in the world he had been raised in, a loyal soldier born to fight to protect humanity and earth. And in the next moment the SPARTAN II, the pinnacle of human bio technology, but cursed to endlessly analyze and reevaluate his life, knowing that everything that had been done to him had been done to make him a perpetual slave to the Navy. He slept because he was ordered to sleep, he ate because he was ordered to, and he lived because he was given the opportunity to be a hero. Scott knew he had been a number in a program; his mind wasn't what Dr.Halsey had wanted. He was her least favorite son, because he was her deviation from her perfect results, and no matter what he knew that she had wished he had died in the procedures like so many of the other SPARTAN II candidates. Project MJOLNIR was supposed to have weeded him out, so that only those who were perfect survived, only the desired results would be there.

The truth hurt his mind, dulled his senses, and lowered his morale. The truth was that he could see just how different his brothers and sisters had become from those who they followed. They had lost something inside themselves; something intrinsic to every regular soldier he ever followed or saved. His brothers and sisters were his family, those who had bled, and fought, and suffered with him, but done so gladly as if it was the only true path they could have ever taken. But they weren't human, not like their mother, not like their commanding officers. Scott could see it in those painful moments of clarity, how the grim prospect of political schism had born them to this life, but how they had enslaved their own minds to the service and protection of humanity.

He would kill. He would always be fighting and killing, not because he was commanded to do so, but because he could never choose otherwise. "We were born twice," he silently mused staring at those dark bulkheads before forcing himself to sleep, "once to be given form, and again to be given purpose." Scott felt the obsession within himself though, the raw addiction to their greater good, to their purpose that certainly damned them to a life of fighting. Perfect soldiers were specialized. Specialized humans could only do one thing.

Yet still in the face of this knowledge, his mind would return to the myriad of experiences and desires that had shaped him since he was six years old. The rewards, the challenges, the combat, the fear, and all the things he had been taught to excel at and surpass. He was so much more than human, but he lacked the basic ability to choose after all those years. Everything was their missions. Everything was their duty. Their life was to serve humanity, which was why the grunts feared them, that was why the ONI brass called them automatons, because Halsey had discovered a greater secret in her work with those children so many years ago.

They had never had a choice; they would have always served and fought, and fought well. They would never give in, never let fear take them away. Scott would never turn from whatever was asked of him, because in their minds conflict and war were the only way to live. Though some would believe in the veil of the "choice" offered to them by Mendez so many years ago, it was clear to Scott there was no way any of them could have ever declined their superior's offer. This was their life, and they would never leave it, captivated by their own obsessive combative personalities. This was Halsey's doing, her perfection of her experiment, and Scott's knowledge of this made her hate him. His mother hated him so, and would never look him in the eye, ordering him to look around instead, and then punishing him for breaking protocol.

She hated that boy, but to his credit, Scott 079 had survived and lived, and served well. But he was not Halsey's son, not like John, or Vincent, or Errol. She knew he was different, but she never knew how much of a deviant he was. His deviance was his self awareness, he knew what he was doing, letting her shape him into a killer, be tortured by hideous experimentation that would kill so many of his brothers and sisters, her children, her experiments. She hated him because he let her do this to him, and the guilt clearly ebbed at her personality when they were alone. But back on the field, as he raced through the corridor, killing the last few survivors before finding his goal, the control deck, he forgot all that. "Kill or be killed..." were his only thoughts.

Prodigal Son: Part 6 (beginning)
Date: 31 March 2004, 9:09 PM

Part 6: Toy Soldier 079
March 14, 2523 UNSC Special Operations development facility Planet Reach

The twelve year old boy walked briskly beside Halsey as she paced down the white hallway. The boy had a military gait, rigid upright, strong and confident with each step. His dark hair and tanned skinned spoke of the rigors of his training, closely cropped and hardened beyond his youthful visage. His blue eyes were cold and hard, always straight ahead, but she watched him closer than he knew, and she saw his subtle movements, the slight angling of his neck, the tilt of his eyes, constantly surveying his surroundings.

This was Scott 079, her least favorite of the children to deal with; he was here under disciplinary orders. Having been caught trying to steal a full crate of food from the officer's club mess haul while he was supposed to be out on night maneuvers training with the other SPARTAN program candidates. He had been alone, and extricating him had not been easy for the Marines called in by the cooks he had attempted to subdue. It had taken a sergeant and two privates to finally corner him in a freezer, but not without him giving them both their fair share of difficulty.

The calamitous event marked a set back for her credibility, the children were supposed to be completely obedient in order to be shaped into the fighting soldiers that would unite the colonies. Their task was so grievous and great that any deviation from the Navy's precise desired results could defeat the whole purpose of the plan. Scott's face was bruised, a large purple mark extending down from his left temple to his cheek, the imprint of a rifle butt. Halsey wondered why the boy had done such a thing, deviated from protocol the rest normally so rigidly adhered to. But then again, this hearing was to evaluate the boy's mental capabilities, his personality make up. Halsey knew certain intelligence branches looked unfavorably upon her work with the SPARTAN II program, her purpose with Scott would have to unfortunately be to control the potential damage to the program's credibility. Rather than simply discipline him, she would have to find the cause of his behavior, and then to discipline him as an example to the others.

Halsey took Scott to the empty darkened room, where there sat a solitary chair and table. "Sit down Scott," her terse voice was met with immediate compliance from the small child. "You will be answering a series of questions Scott, this is not a test, there is no right or wrong answer, just what you think is most right for you. In a moment you'll be greeted by Anathema, do not be alarmed by her demeanor, she is simply ONI's personnel evaluation AI." Scott sat motionless in the dark room as Halsey stepped away and closed the door. In the room medical sensors trained on his brain waves and autonomous body reactions to the questioning, entering a room adjacent to the monitoring room Halsey sat down with Chief Mendez.

"When will I have my answers Doctor?' Mendez spoke impatient, wishing to deal with the boy within the normal script of military protocol.

"Shortly, Chief, for now though, we need to provide formal proof of the incident as a positive sign for the program." Halsey replied.

"Positive sign? I hardly see desertion as a positive in any military function what so ever Doctor, the boy abandoned the training exercise. Either we deal with him and keep him in, or we send him home." Mendez said, aggravated.

"We both know that's not an option Chief, and further more, you have seventy four brilliant other candidates, we need to evaluate the deviation in this one." She replied.

"He's the same as the others, except he disobeyed orders." Mendez replied the AI was now questioning Scott, and data streamed over the holographic screens before them, categorizing, analyzing the answers the boy was giving. "Why can't we hear his responses?"

"He's hardly the same as the others Chief Mendez, and at this phase it is essential we begin to sort and categorize the differences between the candidates. His deviations are unique so far. We have never once had a SPARTAN II candidate perform any kind of insubordinate act, and blindly we've accepted it as the success of our program, that these children do and act however we say. What we fail to consider is the impact of the training on them, of our specific goal to establish and enhance their abilities as soldiers, perfect soldiers."

"What are you getting at Doc?" Mendez growled folding his arms over his chest.

"Perfect soldiers adapt to their circumstances. And some of our candidates might be ahead of schedule." Halsey paused for a moment, "Deja cross reference data from Anathema subject 079 with academic performance and evaluation subject 079." She spoke clearly to the disembodied AI she knew was present in the computer system.

"Working Doctor." The heavenly voice answered to her. "Complying Doctor Halsey." Anathema's monotone voice acknowledged.

Mendez looked at the screen angrily, the boy had hardly moved, not fidgeting, not touching the desk. All the while the AI Anathema sat across from Scott in a virtual chair, looking exactly like the boy, mirroring him. He tests were provoking a response finally; the monitors showed high brain wave activity, Mendez wondered what the boy was thinking. Halsey knew.

Halsey reviewed the data concluded by Deja and Anathema as the test concluded, the boy still sat in the dark room in silence. "He's analyzing the evaluation." Halsey said exasperated, in her mind she knew the boy was a flaw in the program, but I was shocking at such a young age to become cognizant of the forces that were shaping his life. She wondered now exactly how much of his own volition he participated; Anathema was busy reanalyzing his reactions when she noted the extreme variance in his performance evaluations.

"For two days straight last month he failed every test, physical exertion, tactical training, specialized training, and all academic evaluations." Halsey stated almost to herself. "And then for three days afterwards led the squad in every test, including the group exercise where reports say he volunteered for the most hazardous part of the challenge... the tactical diversion."

Prodigal Son: Part 6
Date: 1 April 2004, 9:35 PM

Part 6: The Fallen Before Us
2536, March 12, Military calendar, Aboard Assault Cruiser Romulus; high orbit over planet Euripides.

Colonel Garrison Prinslow sat in the high backed chair at the head of the table; ahead of him holoprojectors were displaying mission recordings from the SPARTAN IIs deployed on Euripides. He was an aging man, perpetually at the rank of Colonel since his appointment to ONI's secretive first division. For thirty years the gaunt, hard face that sat above his black uniform had only become harder and paler. A more poetic man would have surmised that his body had begun to react to the metaphorical shadows he operated in, Prinslow didn't have time for metaphors, and even less patience for poets.

The ranks of the Office of Navy Intelligence first division were concealed well despite their funding from the naval corps; there were few officers high up enough to know even the hierarchy of ONI first division. Prinslow was somewhere in the top seventieth percentile in the organization, but even he didn't know exactly who his constituents were within there.

Prinslow's rigid brow narrowed as the first covenant began to fall before the SPARTAN IIs' weapons, assault rifles and sniper rounds tearing through alien flesh and armor. The four augmented soldiers he watched were his personal assignment from Vice Admiral Adrian Yu. Errol 049, Scott 079, Paul 002, and Irenka 103 were his specific task to monitor and evaluate within ONI first division's own special criteria for Halsey's experiments. Prinslow had met the woman once, and she reacted poorly to him, but like a civilian would, cling to idle rumors and egotistical self preservation. He didn't care for her, but then again, there weren't many people he did care for, he mused to himself.

Errol 049 took a plasma round to his chest and his vitals flashed, Prinslow noted the deficiency in his reaction time to avoid or anticipate the attack in the direct fire fight. Errol was proving to be less and less of what Vice Admiral Yu had detailed for him. The Vice Admiral had made it clear to Prinslow that he, and a select group of others within ONI first division, was to be reallocated to data gathering and recruitment detailing specifically within the Navy's special operations program. More importantly, to evaluate the usefulness and aptitude of the SPARTAN IIs that survived Halsey's own Project MJOLNIR experiment.

Yu was an effective tactician, and an even shrewder politician within the Navy. He managed ONI first division's elite covert operations wing with an infallible mission record, he was a cold and ruthless soldier on the field or off, Machiavellian was the term Prinslow had heard more than once to describe Adrian Yu. Yu wanted what Halsey had made, Yu wanted one of the SPARTAN IIs for his own purposes, and he was one of many men and women within the higher echelons of the Navy's intelligence community who had taken a keen interest in the Spartans after their initial success in retrieving the rebel leader Robert Watts. Yu, Prinslow recalled, had said that the children did indeed show "promise."

The one that kept Yu's attention most was Scott 079, the one who time and again seemed to fit ONI's criteria best. 11 years of training and missions had shown him to be adaptive, violent, remorseless, and most of all, independent. Yu had given Prinslow a pay increase every year since he had begun studying the four candidates, as far as Prinslow knew, his case studies had been the only ones to even garner a positive reaction from Yu. To Prinslow the money was meaningless, ONI was his life, and the corps was his life. Thirty years ago Prinslow had been a Marine Special Forces Colonel. He had been a father and a husband; he was none of these things now. His family was dead, dying in a rebel strike that shattered a colony arboretum dome while his wife and two sons walked amongst the trees. Their last hours were shared by twenty three other civilians who died, sucked into the icy vacuum. Prinslow never thought of these things anymore, he wasn't a man to live in the past.

Scott 079 penetrated the enemy ship alone, rushing through the darkened corridors, his helmet mounted cameras and external sensors recording data all the way. Prinslow watched the mission clock move by; the SPARTAN in combat was astounding to him, efficient, ruthless, cold, and instantaneous. But more like an animal than a machine, a predator on foreign ground, but infinitely adaptable, separated from his pack he was even more deadly.

Prinslow watched taking notes leisurely as the mission timer clicked away. Twenty minutes had gone by before the recording turned dark, sounds of plasma weaponry echoed through the audio receivers, a grainy harsh static accompanying each splash of energy. The recording betrayed no visuals of the fire fight however, the subject was clearly under cover and the cameras on his helmet clearly obscured. Prinslow suddenly heard something unfamiliar from the recording, a guttural harsh flowing of alien consonants and tones. The noise was clearly naturally formed; it was a voice, but clearly not registering on the translation databanks for the covenant forces.

Prinslow frantically searched his desk before retrieving Scott 079's personal mission's log. "Freeze," he commanded and the recording froze with 54:07 on mission timer. Prinslow hastily skimmed the log for mention of the incident, but only near the end of Scott's transcription did he see it, "52:56, encountered heavy resistance near enemy craft internal command hub. Cut off from reinforcements." Prinslow scowled angrily, there was clearly more to this encounter, the SPARTAN had omitted something important, what had he held back. Prinslow read on, "60:23, all hostile forces eliminated. Command structure neutralized." Prinslow knew he had it. "Play," he growled and the recording went on, fighting, intense close quarters combat, it was hard to follow, half of the battle was hand to hand, and static assailed the electronic sensors as plasma blades arced and danced around him.

Prinslow's eyes widened as the visuals finally became clear, the motion slowing, the mission timer read 59:02, and the SPARTAN was walking up a long purple ramp to a raised dais surrounded by glowing panels. And there it was the grey skinned alien in a mottled lump of gold and red robes. The alien's complicated guttural voice making sounds and tones previously unheard on the battlefield; it was no Elite, no Jackal, no Hunter, nor a Grunt. "He's the only one who saw this..." Prinslow unemotionally set to work sending the coded information to Yu with the addendum: "translation AI required, SPARTAN candidate selected." The boy held so many more secrets than they had suspected, it was no wonder he was viewed as such a thorn in the side of Halsey and Mendez.

Prodigal Son: Part 7
Date: 4 April 2004, 11:50 AM

Scott was on him fast, pummeling the inverted torso of the Elite, his fist rabbit punched into the neck and face of the Elite until he finally drew back a purple gore covered gauntlet. Scott looked for his broken weapon, it would do him no good, and it was then that he realized he still heard the guttural alien tongue speaking. "Translate." He commanded, but found no answers from his suit's infiltration software. It was then that he saw the silver armored elite descending from the dais, its plasma sword ignited. On his armor intricate designs wove around him, glittering a purple veins that flowed to his crown like head piece. The alien eyed him as its slow menacing steps led it down to the level of the room.

The silver Elite was trailed by one hunter, walking with a slow limp dragging an orange crusted leg behind its massive girth. Scott eyed the situation; the hunter was charging his fuel rod gun, Scott had no weaponry to take the juggernaut on and even hindered by its hurt leg, he wouldn't be fool enough to fight the hunter in hand to hand. His knife was hilt deep in another corpse outside, his sniper rifle in the hands of Colin, his pistol molten steel, and his assault rifle cut cleanly in half, no grenades, his options raced through his mind.

Scott quickly rolled to the ground and snatched the silver hilt of the plasma sword, fumbling with it as he sprung from his crouch towards the Elite and Hunter. The Elite expected him to him to ignite the sword in time. It was barely two seconds before he had closed in on the pair and still hadn't figured out how to ignite the sword, the hunter's fuel rod gun glowed a neon green fully charged, but it was wary to fire it. Scott snapped his wrists upward and the hilt flew from his hand towards the Elite catching it in the face. Disoriented its arm flew out of the prone ready position, the blade was up and would have no time to come back down on him as he closed. The hunter stepped to the side, clearly wishing to engage him.

Scott turned the Elite and placed his leg in the crook of its knee, his hands raced to the arm of the creature and wrapped it around his own, the Elite was off balanced, and Scott slammed his helmet into the alien's head. The shield failed, the cracking of jaw bones could be heard, and the hand holding the plasma sword went limp dropping the ignited blade. He released the alien grabbing the blade before it hit the ground, the hilt was expanded now, hidden switches that required an alien grasp to manipulate, no wonder it was so difficult to wield. The blade refused to bend near his body; it always held a plane exactly with his forearm to make a deadly extension of his hand.

The hunter was surprised by the SPARTAN, but never expected to see its commanding officer flying backwards bleeding profusely from its face, and the human rushing at it with a lit plasma sword ready. The fuel rod gun fired but went wide exploding in a green flare against the links of blue wall; the Hunter knew it would join its battle brother soon. Scott leapt on the beast and pushed the plasma blade through its face, letting the orange flesh tear and sear around the alien weapon, his sword of fire. "Alight with vengeance..." he heard in his helmet in a rough horrid voice.

Time was slow, life was slow, he way dying inside, angry, hating himself, full of fury. The bodies slid to the floor, he killed the Elite, cutting its head from his body. The voice droned, his vision was blurry but he could feel he could see his goal clearly. Scott followed the voice, followed the blue stairs under the arching metal triad to the top of the dais. Behind the dancing lights of the projectors sat the robed figure, speaking, chanting in an alien tongue. Its black eyes watched him as he ascended to its level, hidden beneath robes of gold and red, the chanting he could hear still, "squelch comms." He ordered his suit again, there must have been a malfunction, and must have been an explanation. "You have killed our saint..." the voice echoed, and Scott let the blade hesitate for a moment, as the alien watched him commanding, praying, and chanting in some unknown voice.

Scott let the blade disengage from his hands; it turned off before it hit the ground. Something told him he could breathe, he wanted out of the suit, he waned to be free. He had wasted his life in a fruitless pursuit. He was blight upon the universe; he existed only to destroy, to burn, to wreak havoc upon all of creation. That was when he heard the tone in his helmet and saw the acknowledgement light of communications gear "malfunction cleared, communications deactivated." Scott picked up the alien plasma sword and reactivated its blade. There was no moment of pity this time as he raised the sword and let it fall upon the alien. His HUD was filled with winking warning lights, communiqués from the rest of the SPARTANS.

Prodigal Son: Part 8
Date: 30 April 2004, 1:24 AM

Part 8: Nightmares
July 14th, 2552 Military Calendar Planet Reach, ONI First Division Personnel Barracks
Scott's head hurt, the implants he remembered, they always hurt when someone toggled them. ONI section one, he was with them, his mind was hazy because they had drugged him, it wasn't a drug. His mind was sharp, his senses were dulled, this was a test, and this was their test for him. It was different than any other test they would have ever made, he would be their unique candidate, and there was no Intel he could have stolen. He remembered now, he was at reach, he was home.
Scott focused on his surroundings, he was in a bunker, no, he was in a hospital, no he was on a table, strapped down, he had broken one of his bonds. He willed his eyes to draw the details out of the room, what did it tell him, what could he recall? His mind refused to remember how he had got there, he remembered a beautiful girl in white, those old eyes from the hard faced Asian vice admiral. "Mjolnir," some one had said to him, when, he couldn't remember.
In his mind the mission stood out, he couldn't will his memory back, but he knew he had something to do, something so base, so perfect that it defined him. Then he felt it, within him the cobwebs cleared, his implants making their presence known, and his instincts driving his body. His hands tore his restraints, there was a barrier, and he was already finding a means to break it, to vault it, he was out of the room. He knew every detail of that room, but he couldn't see it. There was a thing, a person, a biped, it was armed, and then it was dead, his hands took its weapons.

Vice Admiral Adrian Yu watched with his wrinkled hands nestled together before his nose, the monitors and holographic displays showed every aspect of the Spartan's movements from thirteen different angles, Scott 079 was in his own world, plugged into an AI construct where multiple technicians worked to keep him unaware of the falsehood of the environment. They were going to present him with his worst fears and greatest challenges, if his mind didn't snap; Yu would know he finally had his man.
"He's escaped sir," the technician said monitoring the progress of the initial challenge.
"Begin the simulation; keep him unaware, I want every scenario covered with execution at the end." Yu ordered the technicians, faceless men and women behind keyboards and sensors. He turned and left his seat among the rows of computers and displays, walked down the hall to the holding cell, behind its glass doors a team of three of ONI's top physicians monitored the SPARTAN suspended like a puppet in the air by a web of cables, a pneumatic lift attached to his waist by a belt. The soldier looked pathetic, eyes glassed over, mouth hanging open drooling, and air tubes forcing him to breathe, stimuli pins stimulating his heart. The procedure was dangerous, but so much more effective in evaluating an operative's capabilities than traditional testing methods. The implant at the base of his skull, recently installed, was designed after Halsey's own devices for the Spartans, Yu mused over how much the good doctor had provided for him in her own delusional plans to end this war. His COM link chirped and he answered "report."
"The subject has neutralized all targets and escaped scenario A completed, one hundred percent kill ratio, even against the alpha." The technician reported.
Yu didn't smile, but he was pleased, the first sign was there. "Move onto scenario B"

Scott was in his armor, his mind was clear, his senses alive; he was angry, furious, running through a scorched cityscape. It was night, and he was a ghost in his half ton second skin, his eyes saw everything, red letters on his HUD flared "eliminate all hostile forces." The first silhouettes of heat came across his vision, and he snapped the elongated heavy assault rifle forward and squeezed the trigger. Fourteen rounds exploded from the rifle and tore through the targets, how many were there? How many had he hit? Scott couldn't remember he just knew everything was dead. He ran forward still.
The ruined streets became a plaza, and the sea of rubble split to reveal enemy transports docked in the darkness, sweeping sensors and lights roving the area, there were two heavily armored targets by the transports, his eyes hurt as he watched them. What did they look like, why couldn't he tell? They were armored, wasn't that his armor? Weren't they in MJOLNIR mark VI like him? Or were they covenant? He couldn't remember, the shots fired at him on the way there, were they plasma or bullets or something else altogether.
He readied the under slung grenade launcher and targeted the first transport. It exploded, his hand ejected the shell of the RPG round, it smoldered, and the plaza was alight with flames. His gun was barking slugs out at targets, the heavily armored targets were already dead, and he had shattered their helmets and let them die. He was running now, dodging backwards and forwards, using ambient lighting and soft cover, all of the targets were dying around him. Red lights flared in his HUD "seize unmanned transport."

Yu sat behind his console, watching the display, watching how fast the Spartan reacted despite the disorienting effects of the plug in. "bravo and gamma neutralized sir, 100% kill ratio, and seventy-five percent stealth efficiency." The technician spoke over his shoulder. "Begin scenario C," Yu replied succinctly.
Adrian Yu was a weathered soldier, though his body hardly showed it on the outside. For a man of sixty six years, forty six of which had been in the Navy's service, twenty four of which had led him to the head of ONI section one's operations division. Those twenty four years had begun with his act of valor in the face of overwhelming odds; he had led the extraction team that had ensured the safety of fourteen political dignitaries from earth and sixteen civilian hostages during a ship to ship engagement over Huron IV's research station. That seemed so long ago to Yu now, how he had been special forces operative, but that one night, mired in the blood of so many men and women had made his career, and made him a husband.
The twenty eight year old porter on the shuttle they had recovered had been a beautiful young girl with long tresses of black hair. She fell in love with him on the ensuing trip back to earth from Huron, two weeks with a repair above Reach's azure skies and he was going to be a husband. Although it took him a year and a half to finish his ship's tour of duty, he returned to marry her, and be reassigned at ONI section one on Reach, he started his family then; those three beautiful girls he had been granted.
Yu was a father.

Prodigal Son: Part 9
Date: 2 May 2004, 10:51 PM

Part 9: Civilization(beginning)
July 17th, 2552 Military Calendar Planet Reach, ONI First Division Personnel BarracksThree days he lay in bed, Scott thought, his mind a pounding maelstrom of different sensations. His hands, he had always felt his hands, but only now could he feel them suddenly returned to him. The first day his eyes had felt like they were going to burst, even the shadows were unbearable to see. The second day he had found his body breathing on its own, his heart beating yet again. This day he was trying to move, his muscles were taught and strong, they were as he had left them before submitting to the tests. For the life of him he couldn't remember what had happened, his neck hurt, his head hurt, but the pain was subsiding.

Around him was the apex of human medicine, machines monitoring, tending to him. Doctors watched him from the observation room, they knew he was awake, listening, waiting, but they hadn't addressed him. He was visited once a day by Vice Admiral Yu, who told him what was happening to him, it was part of the dendrite repair process, his mind would have to restore itself. This was the result of the installation, what they had installed was an input slot that would connect to his armor. Scott hadn't asked why, he hadn't asked for an explanation, he accepted what this was. Another price for his addiction, he was a soldier in the service of the UNSC first, and their will was his.

Yu spoke with him, hovering over him, most of the time it was nonsensical, the man was filling the silence for him, to stave off the isolation the healing process had brought on. Yu was attending to him once a day, each day, and the man spoke of his family, his children, and his daughters now grown. Scott didn't care about the stories, or the man's family, he waited for orders. But all the while Yu was leading to his greater goal, to the point of all this, Scott was patient; he had nothing to do but sit in silence listening to the man. By the third day, he could speak again, that was when Yu had confronted him with the truth.

"What do you think 079," Yu was in the corner with his arms folded, "of what was done to you?"

Scott knew there was no right answer to this question; whatever he was going to say would be recorded, analyzed and used towards someone else's means. He looked at Yu though; this man was simply standing there, talking and listening. Scott coughed and spoke, "I'm glad it was done, I can't imagine any other life." He was too honest in his candor, but his mind was still exhausted, and hints of pain from his limbs returning to his senses were distracting him.

"There's more to life than killing 079," Yu replied, striding over, "there's more to this war than just an enemy to be fought."

"I don't understand," Scott knew where this was going, the same confrontation he denied himself when he forced himself to sleep every night. He looked at Yu's hard nose, his dark eyes and grey streaked hair. That aging face set on tan yellow skin, watching him and speaking to him.

"Of course you don't Scott; you've never seen what we're fighting for." Yu rested his hand on Scott's shoulder.

"Earth, humanity." Scott said looking back to the observation window, anything to distract him from this, his life, the death, the killing, the manipulation that had brought him there.

"Children Scott," Yu looked towards the observation window, following the Spartan's gaze. "We're fighting for our children, for our families." Yu looked back to Scott and then paced away. "Do you remember your family Scott?"

"I remember Dr.Halsey, and my brothers and sisters." Scott replied looking back at Yu, and the blue holo projection the vice admiral was watching. A picture of his cranium from relayed MRI sensors, beneath an eighty three percent complete was displayed. Scott remembered little before those days that defined his life, before he was a boy in a military base hidden away from everyone. The hard lessons of survival etched into his mind defining his character, his very essence. He sneered angrily.

"They're not really your brothers and sisters Scott; they're not your family. You don't even know what a family is. But that's normal, you're just a boy." Yu looked back at Scott, the blue light behind him framing his black uniform.

"I'm hardly a boy anymore sir," Scott hated this sensation, this demeaning failing. "I've been fighting your war for nearly fifteen years now."

"And all this time, you still haven't learned why you're fighting. The strange thing about you Spartans, Scott, soldiers without a cause." Yu approached him again.

"I fight for the UNSC; my cause is to save humanity, to save Earth." Scott replied, in rigorous military cadence.

"For Earth, have you ever been to Earth Scott?" Yu asked simply.

"No sir, never." Scott replied.

"Why is it important to you then?" Yu calmly continued.

"It's the hub of human civilization sir, the center of the UNSC and human government. Without Earth the last remainder..." Scott was interrupted by Yu's quick dulcet tones.

"I am well aware of Earth's grand importance to humanity, but you overlook my meaning Scott. There is no meaning for you in Earth, you are a soldier, and we both know why you fight, why you separated from the others. You're alone Scott, the way you like it, the rest of us, are just how you get from place to place, from battle to battle." Yu looked down at the SPARTAN, Scott met his stare. "It's not your fault Scott, you are the product of Halsey's deranged designs, though well intentioned, have robbed you of your very birth right as a human being."

Prodigal Son: Part 9 end
Date: 2 May 2004, 10:53 PM

(Part 9 ending)
Scott remained silent; he had never before betrayed his own lust for combat, for its euphoric distraction from the truth, from his disgust with his life. How was he this way, two minds in one, a raw instinctual killer, a perfect soldier and warrior born to march before all of Earth's enemies? How had he let them do this to him, why did he trade off so much for this life he led? Why did he live it still though, completely aware of his failing. He had no reason for this life, and yet he was compelled on, he never denied his orders, never denied his superiors. Yu was dragging this out of him; he knew all of these things before hand.

"Your birthright is your humanity, Scott." Yu sat down next to Scott, bending his rigid military stance to a more comfortable balance, half on the bed, half standing. "I know where she plucked you from, where she took you away from, what life you would have led, had it not been for Halsey, for Project MJOLNIR."

"I don't see what any of that has to do with me now, sir." Scott wished he could move, run, and flee this interrogation.

"You're right, what's done is done, and you are now, what you are. You are a soldier, a SPARTAN II modified human, the very peak of our technological innovation. You're smarter and faster than any agent I've ever seen trained, your tests, you can't remember them, a product of the direct stimuli interface, prove you're much more than just a soldier Scott. And that is why you will always be a thorn in Halsey's side.

"You're the deviation of Halsey's program; the variable she had hoped would have been weeded out during the operations." Yu folded his hand together, and then looked back to the blue holo projection. "Tell me about nights where you can't sleep."

"How does this have anything to do with my service to the UNSC?" Scott tried to find the words to escape Yu's line of questioning.

"Has there ever been a night where you couldn't sleep?" Yu patiently replied.

Scott was silent, but couldn't deny his superior his response, "no sir, not since that first night."

"Were you always exhausted at the end of the day?" Yu further inquired.

"No..."
"Then how did you sleep, with the knowledge of how you were being trained and molded into somebody's tool? Their assassin, their killer, their soldier, whatever you want to call it." Yu fell silent, and waited.

Scott didn't respond for a while, letting the minutes drag by as the forced self introspection wound his way through his addled mind. "I slept because I was ordered to. I made myself sleep, so I would be ready, always ready."

"They trained you to that as well Scott," Yu sighed, "Halsey wanted you this way, unquestioning to the things you did for her, that you would have to do for her. Do you remember how old you were when you first killed a man? I do, I was twenty four, I was with a boarding team on a pirate freighter, and I shot four men dead.

"I killed hundreds in the line of duty Scott, for the UNSC, and for Earth. But I never became anything other than a killer. I was just their tool, following orders like you, and at night I slept, because I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I was fighting for Earth's government, to prevent civil war. The war you were supposed to have prevented, before the Covenant."

Scott let the words from Yu's diatribe sink in, his mind didn't hurt anymore, he was admitting his failing, his addiction, and this man that understood him. And it was a disturbing premonition to consider the truth of the situation, and finally he asked. "And what changed that for you?"

"I found my humanity Scott, I found my wife, and she bore me three beautiful daughters. You've seen one, the picture on my desk, the girl in white, I know you saw it. You see everything when you walk into a room; it's one of your special characteristics, to pay attention to every detail." Yu looked back to Scott, "she's my eldest, Kyoko, the first of my girls and the only one to stay by my side still to this day. Her mother and sisters are back on Earth, safe away from all this, but she refused to go with them. I would do anything to protect them, my children and my wife. That is why I am here, because I will never waver in the face of that duty." Yu stood and walked around the bed to the wall of equipment and monitoring stations, pausing to examine some of the readouts on their displays.

Scott watched the vice admiral and felt the pain surge in his lower back but recede abruptly feeling sensation and control of his lower torso's muscles return. Yu looked back at him "You're rebuilding yourself fast." Scott continued to watch the man, considering his position, his influence, and his power and yet the odd deviance from the traditional military structure he was displaying here. "That's good, because there's something much more at stake here, and soon you will be given the mission Project MJOLNIR was designed for. And at that time, you will have a decision to make Scott, about who you fight for, what you fight for. And most importantly," Yu paused, "to what extremes you would go to for that cause."

Yu walked back to the door, "In the course of your mission Scott you will the opportunity to truly end all of this, but it will be an exercise of free will. Halsey will want you to capture the Aliens who began this slaughter, she'll expect you to somehow bring them to us, and make them reason, negotiate. But it will be a waste Scott, they will never negotiate, they will never have pity or forgiveness for us. Halsey will still expect you to follow her orders; to obey her as she had you all trained to do so since your childhood." Yu shot one last look at him, "but you will have a choice, you're more than a soldier."

Yu left the room, and Scott sat up, facing his dilemma, his body was responding again. He looked at his hands, and thought again about his position. Halsey had a plan, Yu had only spoken vague reference, but it made sense, the SPARTAN IIs were obviously the only soldiers in the UNSC capable of such a brazen act. Scott knew now why he was here, he remembered that grey skinned robe clad alien he had cut down. He knew who the real foe behind all of this was. He had a choice, he looked at the blue projection of his cranium and sighed, at ninety four percent, he was drawn to his family, and the girl in white.

Prodigal Son: Part 10 (beginning)
Date: 10 May 2004, 4:32 AM

Part 10: Run Home Little Man
UNSC Battlecruiser Pillar of Autumn

       The other SPARTAN IIs were scrutinizing him, he'd been gone from their midst for a month and a week, his absence would most certainly have been noticed. Halsey stared at him from the doorway, watching his black uniform strip from his scar covered body, stepping into the bodysuit layer of his Mark VI armor. Something had changed though, this all seemed different. "Where the hell have you been? Your recall orders were given two days ago." Someone said, a non comm., clearly not a SPARTAN.
       Scott knew what they were angry about; he had been pulled by ONI three days ago after Halsey's in depth evaluation of their performances and explanation of Project MJOLNIR, the mission they were born for. He was suiting up and there was a much grimmer threat looming over, he had heard from Yu, and John was about to tell him. Halsey's footsteps clamored away from the ready room; no doubt she would be seeking the safety of the Planet's surface.
       "The Covenant is in bound to the system Scott, we have less than four hours before their fleet arrives, fleet command has us locked for an exit vector." John's matter of fact by the books tone reached Scott's ears as the technicians began to fit him into the second skin of his armor's legs. It was more what he didn't say that aroused Scott's attention; this was a crucial moment in their lives. Their home was going to burn, and they were running from the fight.
       "When do we leave master chief?" Scott asked, looking John square in those glassy eyes of his. He called his brother by his rank, by his title, not by his name. It was a Freudian slip, a deliberate one that John definitely didn't appreciate. John 117 looked at him then, really looking into his eyes, both seeming to question who the other was after all these years. "We know what's going to happen, John."
       "It's not our place to guess Scott, we win or they die." John replied. "Suit up. Fleet command may need ground forces."
       "Whenever, wherever... Master Chief." Scott looked around the room; he was being stared at by all the SPARTAN IIs and their technicians. He was the insubordinate fourteen year old boy paraded in front of them again. They all looked the same in that armor, but with their helmets off he saw the myriad of shaved heads, skin colors varying but still pale, hard eyes fixed on him. This was his family, they were born to die. His mother had born them to die in this service. John was angry, confused at what was going to happen. The burden of leadership had never shown itself in him, he had never sacrificed a soldier, and he wasn't ready to give up on Scott then. Although all the signs were there, all the warnings were present.

Three days ago
       Scott left the briefing room under armed escort. The men who had chosen him from the SPARTAN IIs in the amphitheater were hardly a match for him, even unarmed. They wore black uniforms with sparse ornamentation, armed with pistols at their sides, and ONI patches on their shoulders. These men would have folded under his grasp if he had made a move on them, snapped in two as their spines broke under his lightning fast take downs. They would never have had even the five seconds necessary for them to draw their pistols, much less the extra two seconds to disengage the safeties. And yet he let them lead him away.
       Scott remembered everything now, the meeting with Yu, the long hospital stay, the plugs in his head, and the nightmarish recovery. Now that he had been briefed by Halsey, he was sure Yu would tell him what his options were, all of this was to spite Halsey and her dreams. Scott wondered why he allowed these men to escort him away from them, to the waiting APC that would transport him to ONI section one's central facility. Why he led this dual life now, in spite of the obvious duplicity it prompted between him and the remainder of the SPARTAN IIs.
       The ride to ONI section one's HQ was short and bumpy, inside the APC were armed guards, men and women in full combat armor and fatigues with ONI symbols on their chests and shoulders. They all eyed him warily in the APC as if each jolt would make him snap and twist their own rifles to their bellies and pull the trigger. Suspicion was part of ONI section one, Scott thought to himself, as he silenced his brain's cries for justification for this obvious betrayal of his comrades.
       As the heavy steel door to the APC slid open on its heavy gauge tracks light shone on Scott again, causing him to notice the dust floating in the air of the filtered troop cabin. He left the vehicle following the path to the central doors to section one HQ, there was someone waiting for him before the shaded entryway. Scott stopped as he saw her there, fifty yards from him Kyoko Yu stood waiting patiently. The girl in white watched the tall pale skinned boy of thirty exit the armored transport, his dark short crop of hair contrasting so much with his white skin, and the hard blue eyes that were trained on her now.

       They were in planet fall to Reach, to return to their home and protect the nuclear plants that powered the orbital guns. Scott held onto that thought as his hands seized the titanium bar by the seat he was strapped into. His suit read a full charge, he had a shield that might save him in the event of a crash, but he didn't put his odds of survival on the freefall scenario. How had so much of his life changed, he didn't know. Just hours ago he had been told he could change the course of the war; he could save billions of lives. All he would have to do is kill them all.
       Now he and his brothers and sisters were going to protect their home. He would descend to the planet's surface as part of three squads that would dig in hard and repulse any Covenant invasion forces that would come at them. For the first time in his life he felt trepidation rattle through his body, Scott knew was fear was, but he had never listened to it before. Faced with what he would have done, what he had been prepared to do but mere hours ago, he was disgusted with himself. He couldn't tell his mind to sleep now, he was entering a combat zone, and he had to face what he was becoming. The guilt was eroding his senses.
       "Look alive Spartans!" the call came through his comm. link, it was Jacob, squad leader for this op. Acknowledgement lights winked on in his HUD, Scott signaled his own to the others.
       As he looked around the feelings of remorse seemed to dissipate, his natural instincts were coming around again, pushing away his conscious analysis of his actions. This was a hot drop, there would be more contacts that he had ever seen, but they had the advantage for the moment, Marine armored divisions would certainly be present, and coupled with SPARTAN recon and tactics they would devastate their foes.
       As much as he hated himself for what he had done, Scott hated the Covenant more. He would have hated the human rebel forces that he had been trained to combat just as much, but the Covenant had come then, had become his foe. And Scott would relish in their destruction as he had been born to do. The Pelican jolted up and down, plasma flares signaled enemy aircraft were drawing closer. Scott looked around and suddenly knew exactly who he was, and why he was there. 079 cocked his heavy assault rifle and toggled slammed the dual clip into place.

       Kyoko watched as the older solder walked next to her, she didn't know why she had been asked to give him the data cube by her father, but she did it anyway. She loved her father, despite his failings, despite the horrible divorce that had split her family up and sent her mother and sisters to Earth on his pension. Vice Admiral Adrian Yu was the man who had taught her to speak, helped her with her homework, and been the watchful glowing eyes that had beamed with pride when she received her diploma. Her father would always be there for her, regardless of what her mother claimed he was obsessed with. She had not faltered even a second when he asked her to deliver a package to a special forces operative, she was all he had, how could she let him down.
       The boy she was to meet was hardly a boy at all; clearly older than her and almost two feet taller than her he was a giant. His uniform was simple with very few indicators of rank or combat experience, but she instantly he was more than just a special ops agent. The pale skin and the hard eyes made her uncomfortable, almost as much as noticing the small hints of scars on his hands and neck that his uniform strained to conceal. She gave him the data cube and the manila envelope that bulged at its closed end. Kyoko wondered why her father had not been able to come to this meeting.
       The boy was named Scott, she noted his politeness, an almost too rigorous attention to detail and formality as he held the door for her and walked precisely on pace with her. Kyoko watched as he opened the envelope and withdrew the mini-projector, she brought him to her office near the ecology wing of the section one building. The boy sat and watched the projection play a message for him, her father speaking to him, she wondered if she was supposed to know that much about the war he was fighting. The projection played and the boy put his hands on his head in frustration. Kyoko Adrienne Yu learned the truth of the boy, the SPARTAN soldier that sat before her. He held his head as her father told him of his birth family, and the life he had had as a small boy on Earth.

       Scott stood with the others as the Pelican took the last plasma blast it could stand, blue fire washing over the bow of the transport and causing the fore-cabin to explode. His squad was Yellow squad, they were to secure and protect the fusion reactor located near ONI HQ's personnel housing. The area they would protect was the size of a small city, marine reinforcements were scattered and in need of leadership, a guerrilla defense of the reactor would be easily achieved with divergent raiding parties engaging the Covenant in the maze of dormitories and barracks. Scott didn't care right then about where he was from, who he had killed, or where he would go. At that point he was ready for death.
       "Blow the hatch! Yellow squad signal in and get ready to pop chutes!" Jacob shouted to them. They had equipment crate parachutes attached to their armor, a last minute invention by Errol as they had loaded up into the Pelicans on The Pillar of Autumn. They were too close to the ground as the rear hatch's explosive bolts blew the titanium door off of the craft, but they still jumped and let their chutes unfurl. Scott felt his body lurch upward as his parachute caught his weight and slowed his descent. Below them Covenant plasma bolts were arcing into the air, streams of purple energy racing by them.
       A blast signed the air by his face and suddenly he was dropping rapidly again, his chute incinerated in the air. Damage indicators were flaring on his HUD, messages from his squad of Spartans being slaughtered while hanging in the air. He was falling far too fast to tell where he was, the ground was a building beneath him. He felt an impact, as a foyer's skylight splintered around him and he fell five stories to the ground. His visor flared gold as his energy shield raced to compensate for his fall. Scott blacked out on the floor as shards of glass rained down upon him.

Prodigal Son: Part 11 Kyoko
Date: 25 May 2004, 5:53 PM

Part 11: Innocence(one of two)
ONI Division one personnel compound, Planet Reach

Kyoko cried in the arms of woman holding her for dear life as the skies became bright blue. Flares of plasma licked the buildings around the ONI citadel; she was with the refugee civilians in the first bunker layer. They were exposed, and only a few dozen marines guarded them with a broken down tank, smoldering from heavy weapons fire. Kyoko was terrified, she didn't want to die, and she sobbed into the white material of the woman's coat.
A day ago this woman would have been Dr. Ferrisbauer, a heavy set older woman she would pass every day in the botany laboratories. The woman was a lab director, and helped govern the distribution of the fauna all over Reach, terraforming a planet was a difficult process after all, and making a transplanted environment resilient to a planet's changes often took thousands of years. Kyoko didn't work under the woman, she was in a different lab group altogether, her lab group had been killed already; their laboratory was vaporized by a Covenant ship hovering barely half a meter off the ground.
Four hours ago Kyoko had been disembarking from her car, nodding to the handsome marine that guarded the entrance to the citadel compound. She was returning from lunch with an attractive Lieutenant who had met her over the past month of docking over Reach. He was a charming man, smart and funny. Kyoko enjoyed his company, and had blushed when he kissed her, feeling excitement bloom within her. In her most secret desires, she felt love blossoming from that moment. Lieutenant Gerald Harkins was indeed a lucky man.
Three hours and fifty seven minutes ago the plasma energy rained down upon her lab group as it fled Ecological Compound A4. In a bright blue explosion her friends and colleagues were vaporized, the shockwave tossed her car end over end. Marine drop ship engines woke her from her daze as they streaked to deploy, countering the insurgency. Kyoko had been seized by their fall back team, and flown to the center of the Citadel compound. The city like military installation was being turned into a war zone; Kyoko had been mortified by the destruction.
Now she was here in the bunker, her white suit was stained with blood and dirt. She was terrified, she didn't want to die, she kept crying. The thumping of far off mortars was suddenly pierced by the staccato clamor of machine gun fire. Gruff voices shouted all around as armored humans ran to protect the bottlenecked entrance of the bunker. "Lay 'em down marines!" Their commanding officer shouted. Kyoko threw herself to the ground, even without being in the line of fire this was too much for her senses. She cowered, hoping for anything, anyone to save her, to save her father, to take them away from all this.
"HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT?"
"HUNTERS! HUNTERS!"
"NO! NO! GET THAT ROCKET HERE ASAP!"
"Manny what the hell is that black thing?"
"Dear god I don't want to die!"
"I'm out I'm out! Reload! Give me reload now!"
"The scrapper's gone! Oh my god noooooooo...."
"Those motherfuckers got Gabe! Someone for the love of god get that fucking rocket on them!"
"Rocket? What rocket! Tycho was wasted outside on patrol! We've got no fucking rock!"
The machine gun fire flustered in the air, and suddenly Kyoko felt a deafening thud wash over her, rolling her body and tossing her in the air and then to the side of the room. She couldn't hear anything, and she looked around in a daze, the lights flickering. The marines were recovering; she could see bodies, freshly killed bodies. Human and alien bodies alike were massed around the opening. The red gore of several dead marines was mingling with strange colored bloody pools around massive blue armored figures. Her head hurt, blood dripped from her ears, she felt feint as she pushed off of the floor.
The black figure was in the door way, its machine guns still spurting a yellow flame from their barrels. Shooting outside away from the refugees, the squirming masses all huddled inside the massive first tier of the invasion bunkers. There had been two hundred of them in here at the beginning, with a half a company of marines inside and out.
The figure was black, it was burned. It stopped shooting and Kyoko could barely hear the whispers of men and women shouting at her. The figure turned and its golden amber face watched her, walking swiftly to her, it knelt to her and its massive armored gauntlet gently touched her face.
"Kyoko Adrienne Yu," she heard a hard voiced whisper close to her ear, "I promise you...."

Prodigal Son: Part 11 Scott (beginning)
Date: 2 June 2004, 2:35 AM

      Two hours ago Scott had careened through the sky only to have his parachute melt away under white hot plasma fire. He had crashed through a skylight and broken his fall on a bizarre iron and glass piece of artwork that adorned the entryway to Physics Lab B4 in the south end of the ONI military complex affectionately known as Citadel. Scott knew this because his suit's data recorders knew this, he knew he had blacked out because his suit had injected him adrenalin to wake him up. Scott had awoken to a very surprised Corporal and four black faced marines; they were all completely covered in a burned residue that had erupted in the laboratory when plasma explosions had ignited an oxygen fire that proceeded to gut the lab's primary experiment wing. Scott knew this, because Corporal Gunny Hayes of the four fifty one knew this.
       Scott reeled from his fall, his ribs, one was definitely broken, and it would feel like four or five until his suit could try and compensate for it. Scott didn't care, he could deal with worse, and he had been tortured and trained all his life, being beaten and broken didn't matter any more. The Corporal had relayed the situation to him, the Yellow Squad drop had been botched, Hayes had watched the covenant pick them out of the sky, and some of them dropped, some just burned away.
       Scott's weaponry was slag, crushed under his body, warped by the heat of the near plasma miss. "I need a gun, and whatever explosives you have to spare." He had said to Hayes, the man mournfully obliged, stripping the weapons off of the dead bodies of his men.
      "You have orders to protect this building Corporal?" Scott asked, feeling defiance in his words.
      "I did once, until the evac came for the science team sir," Hayes replied, spitting into the black soot. "That was before they all died being burned alive, now we're just waiting for our next chance to give it back to those pig faced sons of bitches one last time."
"You and your men have a death wish?" Scott had asked, noting how much of his suit was covered with the black residue, sticking to his armor, the more he brushed it, the more it spread around him. It was then Scott realized his shield was off, and wouldn't reactivate.
      "We're certainly dressed for the occasion sir," one of the marines had spoken in a hard deep voice.
       Scott's comm. link winked on, a clamor of battle field chatter filtered through, and then suddenly he saw them. Four acknowledgement lights winked on, a mission go signal flashed on his HUD. "I think I might have a damn good mission for you and your men Corporal, we need to move to that fusion plant to the north, fleet comm. needs the orbital guns powered, think you and your men are up to it?"
      "We're ready to roll whenever you are sir, it'd be an honor to fight with you and yours." Hayes grinned pulling back the breech on his sniper rifle, "Christ, never thought I'd see the day when I'd be pushing all hell back with a squad of Spartans..." he was interrupted by one of the younger looking soot covered marines.
      "Corporal, we can't do that sir! There are still civilians in the area! Don't you remember Tycho's plan? If we don't get moving again they're all as good as dead!" the marine was agitated, there was more to the story than Scott knew.
      "Civilians?" Scott felt something wrong in his stomach just then, as if the clarity given by his righteous return to the Pillar of Autumn had suddenly vanished.
      Hayes sighed and looked up at Scott, "the science labs were on full duty, our company was supposed to be evacuating them to the bunkers. The plan was ONI would put them all underground in the hard shells, until transports could get them out of here. But then Tycho caught word..." Hayes stopped, looking back to the crushed foyer.
      "Word of what?" Scott found himself asking more insistently.
      "ONI closed the gates to the bunkers during the first wave, there were still a thousand people outside, but even with a full company they didn't think...." Hayes looked back at Scott, "it doesn't matter, and they're all dead now we need get on our horses and ride, if fleet command needs those damn fusion plants we're going to make sure they're still running!"
      Scott was getting orders, his squad knew where he was, and it was time for them to do what no one else could do. Born to fight, fight till you die. Scott thought of Adrian Yu and what he had asked him, "You got something to fight for Corporal?"
      "You're damn right I do, it's called blood, sweat, tears, and my men dead under those goddamn aliens' boots right now!" Hayes replied starting towards the door.
      "I need the manifest of civilians, which ones are still alive." Scott said following the Marines.

Prodigal Son: Part 11 Scott (end)
Date: 2 June 2004, 2:40 AM

       "Tactical command is still online, they've got all the transceivers of all personnel still in Citadel, hell it's probably how the Covenant knew where to go to start killing." The younger marine said. He was holding a hand sized link console, it displayed a holographic interface showing the active status of the military data stream.
      "Find me Vice Admiral Yu, now, I need to know...." Scott said heading out into the hazy daylight. There were no contacts, the marines and Hayes were sweeping for enemies as they began moving north, less than half a block from Physics lab B6 when the young marine caught up to Scott and said, "he's hard to find, ONI listings are restricted, but.... I found this... does this help?"
      Scott saw Kyoko's status indicator displayed, her pristine face highlighted by the blue holographic background. She was alive. Yu's words replayed in his mind as he thought of the man's persuasion to betray Halsey's vision. "Corporal, we have a mission to finish."
      "We're double timing it as it is sir, sorry not all of us have powered armor." Hayes caustically replied.
      "We're evacuating those civilians." Scott said readjusting his bearings to head to the smoking buildings of the Citadel's center. "We're getting you and your men off this rock before they glass the planet." Scott moved to take point, "look for transportation, we're going to need some armor to get through those lines up there."
      The marines were silent for a moment, and Hayes simply stared. They all seemed to be waiting for one of them to speak, their orders were a mess, their mission botched, the whole planet being invaded. Hayes finally looked to the younger marine who had first spoke up about the civilians, "well Tommy I think you got your wish, you're going to get to see that little blonde number again after all. Let's move out Marines, unless you think joining a Spartan in driving a warthog straight into the devil's own personal blender sounds like too much for you!"
Thirty minutes ago Scott remembered Hayes as he died in his arms, the man had a smile on his face. Happy to be relieved of the pain he had endured, he had died fighting towards that last entrance. Only Tommy was with Scott then, the other marines had given their life for him. As they saw the rush of covenant heading towards the bunker's entrance Scott had looked at Tommy, "I'm sorry."
      "Don't be," Tommy answered him, betraying wisdom beyond his youthful appearance, "its war. I knew what was going to happen eventually. So did he."
      "It was my mission." Scott said as he took aim with his scavenged assault rifle.
      "It's all of ours." Tommy wasn't afraid as their weapons announced their presence to the Covenant onslaught they had interrupted. Scott saw him fight on; he killed fourteen grunts before an Elite finally came upon him and killed him. Scott proceeded through the rubble of the entryway to the Citadel's central building, killing the Covenant he could find in his path. He didn't watch his body react or his instincts took over, he simply counted every time he chose to kill an enemy. He was better and faster than they were. He would outsmart the lumbering hulks of the Hunters, and overpower the smaller grunts and jackals. And when faced with the last of their leadership caste, he pulled the trigger on his rifle again and again.
      Scott found the entrance to the bunker in a burned out ruined cement hallway twenty meters by twenty meters in diameter. Marines were being wiped out by a force of four Elites flanked by hunters. Before the Covenant shock troops were a wave of hobbling grunts being cut down by machine gun fire. Scott took stock of what he had, grenades from covenant bodies, two fully loaded pistols and almost one hundred extra rounds. He breathed into his shattered lungs and began his diversion.
      The first to fall were the Elites, caught unaware as two plasma grenades sought them from behind the cover they had taken from the marine machine guns. Next were the remainders of the grunts, already pouring green plasma fire into the wedged open blast doors. A hunter fired into the bunker, a green explosion was coupled with human death screams. Scott drew his first pistol and targeted in on the rear most of the mammoth aliens.
      An inhuman scream distracted the Hunter from its grim task as it turned to see Scott's black covered pistol bark four rounds into the neck and shoulder of its battle brother. The rear hunter collapsed holding its neck as its purple blood spewed forth, leaving a frothy puddle around its hulking frame. The Hunter, shocked at its brother's untimely demise, flew down the hall in a rage. Scott watched it approach and unloaded the clip at the helmet of the alien.
      The hunter was undeterred and soon dropped its shoulder to charge Scott and flatten him into the wall. The beat was barely a meter away before Scott leapt to the side, throwing himself flat onto the ground. The hunter reeled quickly and slammed its foot to the ground, trying to crush the Spartan. Scott rolled as quickly as he could, but instead found his arm caught under the toe of the Alien's boot. Pain lashed through Scott's body as his shoulder and left arm tendons were crushed and separated.
      Scott felt anger surge in him as the adrenalin suddenly gorged his mind with the wound. Before he had met Yu this would never had happened, he fingered a plasma grenade as he desperately wrenched his arm from under the Hunter and back rolled into a crouch. The Hunter quickly was raising its shield and charging its fuel rod gun. Scott's arm whipped out faster than the beast would have foreseen, launching a blue glowing grenade at its charging weapon.
      "Suit auto repair engaged, resetting joint." The mechanical vice chimed in his helmet as Scott began to bolt away from the Hunter. In a second he felt the force of the explosion, green energy crackling in the hallway, he was almost lifted off the ground. He force pushed him towards the blast doors, and he caught himself on it hitting it with a dull thud. Suddenly the pain was gone; suddenly he could only see the distance indicator on his HUD. He had found Kyoko.

Prodigal Son Part 12(long over due)
Date: 14 August 2004, 9:04 AM

Part 12: The way I lived my life
      Scott 079 walked forward through the mess of bodies, ignoring the praise and surprise of the other marines. She was alive, but hurt, scared, dirty. Scott knelt down to her prone form, looking at her taking in every aspect of her features. His hand touched her face, tingling, as if the whole of his body had forgotten about the incredible pain in his left arm. Scott could only think of how much Adrian Yu had loved this girl. She looked at him in terror.
      "Kyoko Adrienne Yu," Scott began unsteadily, "I promise you..." His words wouldn't finish in his mouth; he didn't know what to say. Kyoko was weeping before him, kneeling in terror, the black soot from his gauntlet spread over her cheek, his hand shot back. "I'm..... I'm..." his mind raced for an answer. "I'm sorry Kyoko... for all of this."

      Scott paced back and forth; the marines had gathered their supplies. They were unhappy at his plan, but there was no way he would be dissuaded. "This is suicide, how are we going to move one hundred and fifty civilians' four clicks in the open. We don't even know if the hanger will be there, how do we know it was torched?" This was the same complaint he'd been hearing since he ordered the Corporal to gather the remaining men.
      They had no transports that could move the whole of civilian mass at once; at best the one remaining warthog with its heavy weaponry could stave off aerial assaults, at least for a brief moment. That moment of respite, if properly executed would be the key to getting them to the hanger, to the one transport shuttle large enough to hold them. Then they would leave this world, narrowly avoiding heavy plasma fire, and then a blind jump anywhere away from Reach, from his home.
      Scott's mind worked furiously searching for the data necessary to get off this world, using the communications uplink of his suit, and the data processor he had stripped from Tommy's fallen corpse he had grimly assessed the situation. Reach would fall; there was no defensive action on the planet that would ensure the lives of these civilians, and more importantly, Kyoko's life. The pangs of guilt still struck at his conscience every time he looked at her, his choice, his betrayal. She reminded him of his unit, of the others dying and being burned by the rain of plasma coming from the Covenant's assault forces. He was living a lie by denying the nightmare.
      Now the marines were armed though, and the petrol was being funneled into the Warthog's spare tank, ten marines, one Spartan, and nearly one hundred and forty civilians. To them it was over, the marines were terrified, and the civilians were even worse. Kyoko seemed almost the worst, but Scott would be carrying her, she was alpha priority now.
      "Are you mad?" Simmons was yelling at him, Scott was priming his weapons caches, reloading clips. To Simmons and everyone else, he was a faceless black terror hidden behind titanium armor blackened from plasma burns. His golden amber visage hiding his eyes and his mouth, all they heard were the electronic recordings and transmissions of his voice. Scott didn't care; they didn't need to see who he was, what he'd been or what he'd done. They needed to live beyond this nightfall. "Are you fucking listening to me? I'm not going to send a hundred forty civies to be burned alive by Covenant artillery!"
      Simmons was a young inexperienced Corporal, and this was probably the first real heat he'd ever seen. Scott didn't care, Simmons was going to his orders whether he liked it or not. "Corporal, we're getting these people off this planet, and not a one of them, not a single one of them is going to die today." Scott's voice was hard, alien coming from the speakers of the blackened armor. Simmons seemed to back down, "I want you on that Warthog with your best gunner, and whatever ranged weaponry you can rope together Corporal, we're going to make sure no covenant comes even close to them on this world or the next."

      Scott was running with the VIP, he had Kyoko behind him, his assault rifle was kicking into his shoulder, picking off the grunts that were rushing the group. The first wave of Covenant had come on them a click outside their bunker, one hundred and fifty human soft targets giving off heat hadn't attracted their sensors amid the flames and smoldering rubble of the Citadel's ruins, but a ghost scout had spotted them in the streets. It must have been radioing in as the depleted uranium slugs from the warthog tore into the flesh of the driver, and the central console of the vehicle. Exploding into a shower of sparks and a blue plume of plasma, the scout was gone, but it was the first sign of the difficulty of their extraction.
      The civilians were uninjured for the most part, they could all run right now, but this was the first click, how many of them would last out the second or third, and most importantly, the fourth to get inside the hanger. Kyoko was terrified, but sticking close to him. He was at the vanguard of their civilian rush, their surge of humanity bucking through the broken and blackened streets amid the melted buildings that once towered over them. Scott led them as he would lead his fellow Spartans, without reservation or hesitation save for their mission parameters.
      The Banshees screamed over them in an overt display of their foreign destructive might, the Covenant in command of them were clearly overjoyed at the slaughter they had lazily stumbled upon as they leisurely circled. Scott had planned for this eventuality, he anticipated it sooner, about six hundred yards back he had anticipated heavy armored resistance, and the warthog with armor piercing weapons had been scouting specifically for this threat. He planned for the worst, he expected every Marine to die, he expected himself to be bleeding but pushing on, he was the only one who could pilot that ship, and he was the only one who had the hacking software to reignite the engines of that shuttle. Scott would not die here, he would die in hyperspace, he would be shot, his insides bleeding and melting till they fused with biofoam and advanced carbon plating. But he would complete this mission, these civilians, these sinless men and women would be delivered from the fiery death that even now was raining down upon this world.
      As Scott watched the first of the three scout banshees circle over his precious cargo moving to his goal, barely four hundred yards away he gritted his teeth and let his adrenalin surge. With his anger, his grim refusal to accept their presence, he raged against them and his mind seemed behind his eyes watching him as he commanded the Marines. "Mark three eighteen, fire pattern Zulu basic! Respond Hicks, Respond Paulson!" He was ordering the back up artillery to move to the middle of the back and open fire with long ranged rifles. Scott had his own equipment, scavenged from the bodies in the rubble of the ONI section 3 building, long ranged armor piercing high rate of fire rifle edged into the slot of his shattered shoulder that burned in pain with every swing of the barrel. But he was conserving his ammunition, until they closed to 100 yards; the VIP was his soul responsibility.
      The VIP was Kyoko... and the 149 other civilians behind her. She would never love him if they didn't survive. She would never love him period. Scott had accepted this long ago, because he knew he had no concept of love. He could never know what existed between her father and mother to create something so beautiful, so wonderful that he hated everything he was. He could never be like her and be simple, be sinless. His hands were too steeped in blood. In his mind, watching the Banshees explode in blue flame as their plasma batteries shattered from the concussion charges in the nose cones of the jackhammer rockets that were spearing them now. In his voice he was a hard killer, remorseless and capable, a proud warrior who was the pinnacle of human creation. But he saw something else, the reflection of the amber mask he wore in Kyoko's eyes. She looked at him in terror.
       "One click to waypoint! Keep your fire lanes tight!" One hundred fifty civilians remained.

Prodigal Son Part 13 A
Date: 18 January 2005, 5:42 AM

Part 13: Burning Man
The hanger doors slid open with mechanical precision driving the retracting motors, the shuttle A36 shown in the early morning light despite the haze of smoke billowing in the distance. Scott 079 was low on ammo, his assault rifle had thirty six rounds and one chambered, his pistol was out of ammo, he had dropped his sniper rifle in the path behind. "Go! Now!" he was barking orders through his grey and black armor, the olive green plating having been burned black with a chemical earlier in the night. Around him one hundred and fifty civilians and Marines surged into the flight bay.
"Check the entry points! Check them now now now!" Corporal Simmons was shouting over the pain of his arm wound where thirteen needler barbs had exploded, pulping his entire left bicep and fore arm, despite the pain he was jacked up on a combat stimulants and bio foam stopped the bleeding. The green corporal was keeping the unit tight, bolstered by the sight of the renegade Spartan II. His men spread out to secure the hanger, to make sure the shuttle hadn't been breeched.
"Will this thing get us off the ground? Who knows how to fly?" a grunt was shouting as the civilians poured into the large white craft. The Shuttle was large, made for ferrying a platoon and light vehicles between systems, Scott knew it would get them out of system, but it would be a blind jump, and where ever they went it would mean a risk of a slow death by starvation lost in an unknown part of the galaxy. For now it didn't matter to him, the burned black armor, the shattered shoulder, the dead and dying he had passed this day hung in his memory.
Scott turned and fired as his motion sensor flared, four grunts were pouring in with three jackals behind them. He pitched a grenade their way as the assault rifle sprayed their faces, depleted uranium shells caught the first three grunts in their masks and methane lines causing the diminutive aliens to pop in a blue fire ball. The jackals hid themselves behind their shield projectors, the blue shimmering energy sparking with every bullet deflected. The sudden bass of the grenade's explosion caught them off guard, although two meters ahead of them the spray of debris knocked them backwards, bludgeoning one of them about the head. Scott was already charging forward with a combat knife in one hand and his assault rifle leveled at the remaining grunt as the jackal's beaked face cracked down on the pavement.
Scott's comm. link opened up with the pained voice of Corporal Simmons "we've got an engineer here, he's firing up the engines but there's no way he can fly this thing! Do you know how to get this goddamned thing off the ground or not?" He had buried his knife into the head of the remaining jackal, with the other one dead under his heal before he responded. "Get those burners hot Corporal!"
The marines were pouring back from the hanger's entry ways to the shuttle as they saw the Spartan toss the grunt thirty meters in the air, slamming into the pavement with such force that its methane tank burst sending the reeling alien flying about on the ground.

Kyoko watched, muted from her shock, outside the view screen of the cockpit there was the massive black and grey form of her rescuer, of their hero. He was lethal amongst his enemies, moving fast and sure, every shot had a purpose. His armor was stained purple and iridescent blue on his boots, his hand a dull orange from his initial combat in the bunker.
Their run to the shuttle hanger had put her in this shock, the fire fights, the aliens, and the insanity of it all. Three marines had died, but not a single civilian had fallen, she had lost track of how many attacked them and how many times, the worst had been the screaming shrill of Covenant jets bearing down on them, being dive bombed with horrid inhuman screams shaking her very soul. But still the black armored soldier had been there he had saved her. He knew her name, and he held her closely, he had told her she would survive. God she was terrified, everything about this day was a nightmare.
The black armored soldier was a Spartan, that much she knew, she had met him before but forgotten his name, she just new the 079 on his shoulder pad, burned off by the plasma fire and the crushing boot of the massive blue armored behemoth he had fought to get to them in that bunker. She saw now the silver and gold armored aliens rushing at him, blue plasma fire racing in impossible speeds towards him.
"Oh my god! He doesn't see them!" Kyoko screamed her voice higher than normal.
"But we do!" Engineer Jorge shouted booting up the weapons control, on a screen to his left a blue wire frame layout of the shuttle appeared, and flashing in red was the forward anti-missile turret.

Prodigal Son Part 13 B
Date: 18 January 2005, 5:48 AM

Scott 079 saw them coming at him, Gold and Silver Elites, they were the best on the ground. Low on ammo and without shielding, cover, or time, he was in the worst scenario he could be in. The plasma streaked past him as they tried to compensate for his running speed, he had no grenades, but there was a chance. "079 this is A36, suggest you fucking hit the dirt right now!" the voice cracked in his ears, echoing in his brain as his body reacted diving forward, they were barely fifty meters behind him when the powerful electric whine of the shuttle's anti-missile system came online.
The massive six barreled gun mounted above the cockpit tracked as low as it could go and sprayed a twenty second burst of its payload. The entire hanger floor lit up with impossibly hot titanium rounds drilling holes into the tarmac. The Elites found themselves in the end of its thirty degree sweep, their bodies perforated by the storm of fire within seconds. They dropped in pieces, with a mist of their own blood settling around them amongst the dust.
"A36, I'm coming aboard, and we're leaving now!" Scott replied pushing himself up off the ground, despite the bulk of his damaged armor, he ran faster than he ever had. Scaling the boarding ramp into the massive white ship he immediately punched the closing switch and headed through the gantry in the fuselage past the wounded and terrified, to the cockpit. Seeing Kyoko there he said to her "sit down and buckle up..." looking at the Corporal "I can fly this, get everyone strapped in, and when we're clear get those cold rooms ready, we need to save oxygen."
Scott popped the seals on his helmet and tossed in the co pilot's seat, strapping into the pilot's seat. He flipped the switches to direct the automatic pilot to his command. Pushing the thrusters gently up the shuttle began to taxi out of the hanger, "you can fly too?" a voice said behind him. Turning to Kyoko his pale blue eyes locked her frightened visage in his "hold on."
The shuttle was on the runway doing a slow taxi, the covenant troops pouring from the streets of the base were being pushed back by the shuttle's turret, plasma fire bounced off the heat shielding of the white craft. Straightening out the craft and readying the flaps Scott pushed the throttle forward, the last training he had received from ONI, how to escape the Covenant.
The shuttle lurched forward in an instant, he knew in the back not everyone was strapped in, some would be hurt by this, some wouldn't be ready for such an abrupt surge of G-forces, but Kyoko was in the cockpit, she was strapped in, she would live. His mission was a success. The racing metal craft shot upwards in an instant from the runway, leaving behind dead covenant and being chased by lethal fuel rod cannon fire. "They won't hit us," Scott said with a grim determination, watching the sky thinning before him, as the blue turned to night. Screaming was coming from behind him, from the hold, from the seats, from the one hundred and fifty civilians behind him.
"Holy shit!" Jorge the engineer's eyes went wide as the burning atmosphere disappeared and the night sky became a nightmarish grave yard for ships and debris. The human fleet was being decimated; the docking ring was alight with plasma fire and venting atmosphere. Reach was falling, utterly and completely.
"Tell me we're ready to jump." Scott said grimly.
"We're ready and charged, but... it's blind... we don't have anything in here, we could come out in a star." Jorge said panicking.
A white plasma missile was locked on them already; Scott pressed the ignition switch, "We'll make it, trust me." Within five seconds the missile would hit them, but in three seconds, the jump was made, and Shuttle A36 was in slip space, hurtling towards the unknown.

Jorge looked at the Spartan with shock and amazement, the disorientating effects of the jump were slowly disappearing, but the massive armored frame still blurred before his eyes. In a second it was gone, and the Spartan was standing, walking back out of the cockpit. "Dr. Yu, we need to get you into stasis now."
The pretty young girl followed him with reluctance in her eyes, Jorge didn't understand what had happened today, but he was alive. He didn't know what this all meant, the single Spartan coming for the girl and then leaving with all of them, taking them all off of Reach. Did the Navy really think this girl was worth so much? She was a botanist, nothing special, but her father had been in ONI division three, it sickened him now to think about it. The only reason he was alive was because of the corruption of the Navy they depended on to protect them.
Jorge looked the Spartan in disgust as it walked away, tears welling up in his eyes, remembering all of his friends on Reach, all of his colleagues, and his wife. His beloved wife, burned down by Covenant plasma because she was in the wrong place. She wasn't near an ONI three's daughter, so she had to die. Jorge held his head in silence. The only sound he heard, were the moans and weeping from behind him, and the metal clank of the Spartan's boots.

Prodigal Son Part 14
Date: 26 January 2005, 6:29 AM

Part 14: Family
Location: classified, forty eight hours after the destruction of UNSC naval base on planet Reach.
      The shuttle sat in silence, mimicking its crew as it drifted in the darkness. The endless vacuum seemed welcoming with its pin pricks of light in countless formations, swirling nebulas off in the distance, Scott 079 and the remaining marines and stood watch through the view port of the cockpit. Less than a day ago Scott had struggled with the one ONI tech they had rescued to remove his heavily damaged Mjolnir armor, his wounds were field dressed and most of his body felt as though the dull embers of fire lodged in his muscles were cooling.

      Kyoko Yu sat behind the helm looking out at the night sky, she didn't know the first thing about flying ships, but she was there anyways, and refused to go into stasis until she knew exactly what was going on. Scott couldn't refuse her; she had the same persuasive logic as her father that manipulated him so. She had stopped sobbing and her bleary hazel eyes were scanning the infinite night for any sign of hope of rescue or direction that the others knew they couldn't possibly find in this empty space.

       "We're between systems, and god knows where we are, no planets in sight." Corporal Simmons young voice reminded them of their quandary. "So what the hell are we going to do? We don't have any food or water on board, just our rations, we need a plan."

       "We know we need a plan Corporal," responded Hector in his strange slow drawl, "but we don't have many options without a damn navcom or an AI."

       "We have a navcom," reminded Jorge sullenly from the back of the cockpit, looking at the tall Spartan in his ill-fitting fatigues they had scrounged off of Private Durley's corpse when he had succumb to the wounds from their escape. The trousers were long enough for the tall broad shouldered soldier, but the shirt barely fit him and remained open, the tattered holes from needler barbs let all company present see the patchwork of scars that dotted the Spartan's torso. But strangely, and what reviled Jorge most of all was the face of Scott 079, pristine in its pale porcelain skin, lacking any sign of age or weathering, he looked like a perfect twenty three year old with piercing cold blue eyes and close cropped black hair. How had this fraud of a hero gone so far with out even one reminder of his cowardice? "We just don't have any data for it."

      Engineering Officer First Class Jorge Whitman was correct, the navcom in the A36 was operational, but had been purged of any relevant information for human colonies and their locations. Protocol had dictated a massive wipe of all the ships docked on or around Reach to prevent the location of Earth from being ferreted out by the Covenant. Jorge was angry though, brooding in his silent fury, although he was alive the memory of his wife, left alone on Reach to die like all the other civilians, ebbed at his conscience. The Spartan had come to save one girl, and took them all with them, but Jorge knew why he had come. ONI corruption had saved the little bitch from burning like his Helen, her father had used his rank to order a Spartan to get her off planet. In his mind the logic of the argument conflicted with his emotions, he knew he was wrong to blame anyone but the Covenant, but his mind reached for answers. An hour ago he had been sobbing in the cold bay, hidden away from the Marines.

       "There's one place we can go," Scott said flatly, his mind thinking back to the events of the past two weeks, it stopped in analysis of the report Adrian Yu had given him, the background about his birth, his past, and his family. A star location was in that report and he had memorized the coordinates as he had with every other aspect of the words. And around that star was a research station codenamed Kappa, just Kappa. "But we need to know if it still exists, we'll need to check the identification chips of everyone on board."

       "Why the hell would we need to do that?" Jorge replied caustically.

       "We need to find ONI First Division personnel, someone high up." Scott answered him without notice of the engineer's disdain.

       "We're not going to find any 079," Jorge continued, "even if we had brought a spook on board, they're not going to have it listed in their manifest, we'd need a damn AI to sort through all the encryption to figure out if they're sleepers."

       "Jorge's right Scott," Simmons cut in seeing the Spartan turn his cold gaze on the engineer, "besides, we cant deactivate the cold rooms now, our oxygen supply wouldn't stand the extra mouths."

       "Then we have to use the coordinates without verification." Scott answered walking to the navigation console.

       "Coordinates? What coordinates?" Private Homer asked, a strange gleam of hope in his wrecked hard voice.

       "Research station Kappa, ONI Section Three." Scott said typing in the commands to the computer from memory.

       "Are you suggesting we make another blind jump?" Jorge was irate, and feeling a sense of panic. "The coils will take another forty eight hours to recharge after that and we only have thirty six hours left of oxygen."       "It's not a blind jump Jorge, pull your panties out of a twist," Simmons was feeling the pressure of leadership, the only binding force in the cockpit. He could tell the Spartan was tired and frustrated, the lack of emotion he showed was a clear sign as far as Simmons could tell, blocking out everything, ignoring everyone. "If a Spartan knows there's a goddamn ONI station, I say we jump."

       "I'm with the Corporal," Homer acknowledged.

       "Good God, are you serious? How can you blindly follow him?" Jorge stood now, shouting as he could, barely able to control himself. "How many of us have died because of him?"

       "Seventeen," Scott replied looking back at the engineer, "five marines, twelve
civilians. Four from plasma fire, three from a strafing run, one from a grenade misfire, and nine from needler barbs from one squad of grunts. All dead within five hours of our making the jump, all died from internal bleeding."

       "Seventeen out of one hundred and fifty is pretty impressive still," Homer said with a shrug of rationalization. "I think he's right, if he could get us off Reach he probably had a plan, and a destination."

       "No... I didn't..." Scott responded.

       "You're fucking kidding me." Simmons said in shock.

       "My only goal was to secure Kyoko and get her off planet, away from the Covenant." Scott answered him, looking the young Corporal in the eyes. Simmons had a shock of blonde hair stained red with his own blood, grey eyes and grey skin from the plasma burns he had suffered. His left arm was in a sling with hefty bandages and tissue boosters on it, not long ago he had been moaning in pain and filled with bio-foam. Simmons had been Scott's first successful field surgery, done in the modest medical bay of the shuttle.

       "Your only goal... you never though about more than getting off of Reach? Didn't you realize you'd have to go somewhere afterwards?" Homer was almost laughing as he said the words, "I thought you Spartans were supposed to be the best of the best."

       "My mission was from Rear Admiral Adrian Yu, he never specified where I take her, she's safe and alive." Scott said folding his arms over his massive chest.

       "For now," interrupted Jorge.

       "Fuck it. This is getting us nowhere Jorge, Paul." Simmons sat down at the other control stick with frustration. "Just make the damn jump, if there's nothing there just fly us into the goddamn star."

       "Keep calm Corporal," Scott said finally breaking his monotone, "we're all going
Home alive, I promise you."

       "You promise us? What happened to your parameters you fucking robot?" Jorge said bitterly.

       "New mission," Scott responded with a wince of pain in his ruined shoulder, "we're going to Kappa, and then to Earth. There's enough dead heroes on Reach."

       "Sounds good to me Corporal," Homer chided, "man I've never been to Earth before."

       Kyoko sat silently looking at the night sky while the others argued; in her pocket was the data module for her personal Botany AI named Gaia. She had pulled her from the network when the word came about the data sweep, and a second level AI such as hers would automatically be completely deleted to prevent data incursion. Kyoko's life's work was in Gaia, and the friendly AI had been her research partner all those years working with her team on building a sustainable ecosystem for Reach. The planet she loved so much had been so resistant to Earth bacteria and vegetation, it had taken years of work to terraform it, and still her team worked to ensure that the terraforming process would not undo itself.

       Kyoko was just one of many scientists on that world, working to sustain the Navy's favored training grounds, and indeed the home of the Spartan IIs. Kyoko sat in quiet reflection as the men bitterly argued, and the Engineer furiously berated the man who had saved her, the pale faced soldier who she had given that disc to for her father. Scott 079, she didn't know how to address him, did he have a rank, did he like his first name, was there even a last name to call him by? Kyoko didn't even think the Spartan knew half of what they were talking about.

       "Sounds good corporal," the younger private had said, and Jorge started a new tirade she ignored. The Spartan left the cockpit with Simmons and Jorge stormed off on his own. Only Private Homer remained with her, he was a rugged faced dirty marine with coppery skin and hazel eyes, his dark sandy hair was short to his scalp and matched his wiry thin visage.

       Kyoko looked at him through his reflection in the view screen, his transparent image blown up on the starry night looking like a God surveying his creation. Her head hurt then as he spoke to her, "Dr. Yu? Everything alright?"

       "We're going to Kappa," Yu replied to him, "Tell the others to get ready for a jump."

       Private Homer smiled at Kyoko as she turned her pretty doll like face at him; she was but slightly older than him, but her youth and vitality shown brightly in her. Her eyes looked to the navigation computer. "Doctor's orders?" he asked as she stepped over to the console.

"Doctor's orders," Kyoko looked at the screen not knowing what would activate the slip drive. "Please tell Scott to come back in here, I'll need his help with this."

       "Yes ma'am," Homer replied walking back towards the cockpit hatch, "after all, he is the only one of us who knows how to fly this damn thing." He finished with a chuckle.       The marines were in good spirits Kyoko thought, the Spartan did that to them, he had lead them away from oblivion and helped them protect nearly one hundred thirty six civilians and non-combat personnel. But the Spartan didn't realize that, didn't realize his affect, the hope he gave them when he strode into that bunker after killing the hunters who were readying for their slaughter. Everyone had looked at him in awe, and she in shock, in terror from all that she had witnessed. But now she was safe, and warm, in on a ship away from the Aliens, away from the pain. All because of him, and he didn't know it.

       It seemed like ages she stared at the blinking holo-screens waiting for Scott to return, when he did his bandage was fresh and his eyes were bloodshot, signs of a struggle. He had been redressing his own wounds, she could tell. His hands were scarred and had a slight crimson tint to them, but his face, from the neck up was so pale and white. He addressed her.

       "You wanted to see me Dr. Yu?" Scott said to her, and instantly memories of Dr. Halsey came to his mind, and the hours spent waiting for her analysis of him, and the discipline of the squad leaders. Kyoko was better than that though, and now without the din of battle his cursed mind was over analyzing everything about her again. He almost wished they were still in danger, so he could take control and block out everything else.

       "I don't know how to activate the jump drive," she replied to him simply, looking at him with a strange cavalcade of emotions hiding in her eyes. "I'd like you to activate it, and pilot us into the system where Kappa station is."

       "I can't do that Dr. Yu," Scott replied flatly, "Corporal Simmons has rank here, and he is currently arguing with Engineer Whitman." Instantly his mind went back to the torturous debate his mind had gone through on the Pillar of Autumn before descending to Reach. Can't or won't help her? His orders had been to protect the silos with the others and yet he disobeyed them to come to her rescue, those were his interpretation of Adrian Yu's orders, his gift to the man who gave him his past. But still it bothered him, did he was a past, why wasn't he more like John 117, why not like Colin, or Errol, or the others. Why did this bother him at night, but never on the battlefield?

       "Scott," Kyoko looked at him intensely, "not for me, not for my father, for them." She looked to the rear hatch, where the cold bays were. "You have your orders; you were ordered to save me but took them with us, that changes everything."

       "I can't put them in jeopardy anymore, if the Covenant found Reach there's a strong chance they found Kappa Station on their way to Reach." Scott sighed, Jorge had a point, he had but more than a hundred civilians in the line of fire, and twelve of them had died. The nightmare mission he had been designed for was never like this, in his mind his life had always been that of the tool of the Navy, and it was so easy to feel a cacophony of contradictory emotions about the life they had forced him into. But in reality, he had his own responsibility to look to. He had their lives in his hands.

       Kyoko's hand rested on his, "Please Scott." Another Yu was asking him to break his orders, to break protocol, to betray what he had been created for. For her he dropped a thousand meters in the air, slew an army, and escaped the burning plasma hell that Reach was inevitably to become. For her father he had been prepared to kill the Covenant hierarchy, let his brothers and sisters become cannon fodder and betray their mission, all for one fatal blow to the great alien enemy of mankind. Rear Admiral Yu had never supplied him with an escape from that assassination, Scott had known this, but he had never expected to survive. And now he had survived, he had betrayed, and he had let his brothers and sisters die.

       "There has to be something good out of all of this," Scott felt a decision made in his heart. His hands moved on the control panel and activated the slip drive. He didn't understand what he had done, he knew they were on their way, but inside something was changing, hardening. He had accepted what he was.

       On ONI Section Three Research and Decryption Station Kappa third watch gunner Lieutenant Allen Sahid watched his radar console. At his command was the anti missile cannons and the minor MAC cannon system that accelerated the surrounding asteroid field into a weapon against incoming ships. The weapon was ingenious, albeit not as accurate or as easy to wield as a standard MAC gun system. Allen was tired from his long shift and drank lazily from his cup of tea as his mocha colored hands adjusted the controls.        "I can't do that Dr. Yu," Scott replied flatly, "Corporal Simmons has rank here, and he is currently arguing with Engineer Whitman." Instantly his mind went back to the torturous debate his mind had gone through on the Pillar of Autumn before descending to Reach. Can't or won't help her? His orders had been to protect the silos with the others and yet he disobeyed them to come to her rescue, those were his interpretation of Adrian Yu's orders, his gift to the man who gave him his past. But still it bothered him, did he was a past, why wasn't he more like John 117, why not like Colin, or Errol, or the others. Why did this bother him at night, but never on the battlefield?

       "Scott," Kyoko looked at him intensely, "not for me, not for my father, for them." She looked to the rear hatch, where the cold bays were. "You have your orders; you were ordered to save me but took them with us, that changes everything."

       "I can't put them in jeopardy anymore, if the Covenant found Reach there's a strong chance they found Kappa Station on their way to Reach." Scott sighed, Jorge had a point, he had but more than a hundred civilians in the line of fire, and twelve of them had died. The nightmare mission he had been designed for was never like this, in his mind his life had always been that of the tool of the Navy, and it was so easy to feel a cacophony of contradictory emotions about the life they had forced him into. But in reality, he had his own responsibility to look to. He had their lives in his hands.

       Kyoko's hand rested on his, "Please Scott." Another Yu was asking him to break his orders, to break protocol, to betray what he had been created for. For her he dropped a thousand meters in the air, slew an army, and escaped the burning plasma hell that Reach was inevitably to become. For her father he had been prepared to kill the Covenant hierarchy, let his brothers and sisters become cannon fodder and betray their mission, all for one fatal blow to the great alien enemy of mankind. Rear Admiral Yu had never supplied him with an escape from that assassination, Scott had known this, but he had never expected to survive. And now he had survived, he had betrayed, and he had let his brothers and sisters die.

       "There has to be something good out of all of this," Scott felt a decision made in his heart. His hands moved on the control panel and activated the slip drive. He didn't understand what he had done, he knew they were on their way, but inside something was changing, hardening. He had accepted what he was.

       On ONI Section Three Research and Decryption Station Kappa third watch gunner Lieutenant Allen Sahid watched his radar console. At his command was the anti missile cannons and the minor MAC cannon system that accelerated the surrounding asteroid field into a weapon against incoming ships. The weapon was ingenious, albeit not as accurate or as easy to wield as a standard MAC gun system. Allen was tired from his long shift and drank lazily from his cup of tea as his mocha colored hands adjusted the controls.

      Suddenly Allen saw the fluctuation, tell tale signs of an incoming system jump. On his holo-screen projection was a three dimensional map of the system and the asteroid belt that concealed Kappa station and its minor manufacturing facilities, and in the bottom south west of the projection was the slow building ripple of space distortion that signaled an incoming jump. His hazel eyes widened and he immediately went to the communications relay channel "command this is gunner position bravo, we have inbound fluctuation, putting weapons on hot stand by."

      The command station responded "roger that position Bravo, all essential personnel to your posts. Radar ops, give us a look."

       "It's a human ship that's for sure sir," the channel crackled with a female voice, Allen knew to keep the weapons ready though, Covenant had used human ships before for infiltration. This knowledge was provided to him from his post and his appointment to Section Three. "It's entering real space now sir! We'll have an ID in moments!"

      Satellites floating in system relayed to Allen images of the white shuttle that had just entered real space with a flash of white energy. The Shuttle was broadcasting A36 Identification, and the readout declared it was the personal ship of Colonel John Abrams, ONI section three tactical analysis pool. Within an instant the communication channel with command went dead and Allen was locked out of his console.

      The only message being relayed was "All hands, prepare to receive wounded." Rear Admiral Drake's own voice issued the order. Allen wasn't surprised by this, Abrams was always sent on sensitive assignments to catalog covenant activities and technology. This was all day to day operations for Kappa Station and its crew.

      Allen knew Drake; he served with him on the bridge of the station. The man was older, nearly sixty seven now if Allen remembered right. Tall and lean with a slight paleness to his skin tone and cold blue eyes. His hair was black on top somewhat, but with faded grey beneath it, and a graying goatee around his mouth. He had a bearing of a somewhat menacing figure, as if all he cared for ONI and its work, the man opened up to no one and nothing save for his personal AI Demetria that operated in his private office. ONI high ranking personnel always had their little privileges; an AI to do busy work was no surprise. The man was married; it was rumored, with a wife back on Earth.

      On his tactical relay screen Allen watched as the ship was escorted in by long sword fighters, Colonel Abrams never got this kind of escort before. And then the voice said what no human in the service of the UNSC had ever imagined they would hear, "attention all personnel, Reach has fallen, all non essential personnel to docking platform A and prepare to receive wounded."

Prodigal Son Part 15
Date: 16 February 2005, 7:16 AM

Part 15: You want them dead? Sick me on them.
Location: Oni Division Three Research and Encryption Station Kappa, seventy three hours after the destruction of UNSC Navy Facilities on Planet Reach.

      Rear Admiral Joseph Drake sat back in his luxurious padded chair, in front of him sat the massive polished cherry wood desk stacked with data slates and with the holographic projection of Demetria in her light blue haze of a female form. She was dressed as she saw fit, like a Victorian woman, perfect in every mannerism, and covered from neck to toe in the hazy blue gown. Her listless holographic eyes drifted over the room and back again, taking in the dark office with its frame seemingly composed of oak shelves.

      The light in the room was indirect, coming from three sparse spot lights, allowing for a heft of shadows from the night sky eternally at his back. Drake liked it that way, it prevent his eyes from becoming too strained from reading his countless list of reports and analyses. The wounded civilians were on his mind, as was the daughter of the now assumed deceased Adrian Yu, and of course the Spartan that had brought them all here. Drake was familiar with what Yu had done to manipulate the Spartan to their aims, in the hopes of achieving a real goal for humanity in Project MJOLNIR in the face of Halsey's depraved experiment. Drake hated her.

      Across the room in the thick padded leather chairs, between which was a short polished cherry wood end table holding a rather large ash tray with a retractable silver lid, sat the stout figure of Colonel Beatrice Kolowicz, smoking a thin black cigarette and tapping it in the tray. She was an elderly woman, approximately his age her garnered, what had been beauty in her youth had retracted in age to make strong lines on her face and a dowdy body. Still in her black dress uniform she was an imposing figure, and any who thought her lethargic from her weight were clearly ill informed, Drake knew. "The old crone," as he sometimes called her in jest, was an effective officer and an energetic manager of their encryption and decryption facilities on Station Kappa, more than that, in his past she had been his lover, and now she was friend.

       "He must know who you are by now," she said putting out the cigarette in a single twist, "Tell me what the report says."

       "Exactly as you suggest," Drake replied to her shortly looking up from the intelligence report on the A36, "they used a damn botany AI to plot this course, and he most certainly gained our coordinates from Yu's little ruse. It seems Adrian gave him more information than we thought." Drake sighed as old memories began to stir.

       "A terrible thing to waste..." she muttered to him coolly.

       "Don't go on Beatrice, this is not the time." Drake's hand stroked the rough stubble on his chin. He had shaved yesterday, hoping he wouldn't look like the image he was sure the Spartan had seen. Somehow hoping a minor change of his wizened visage would make everything about him appear all that much more changed. So those eyes wouldn't look upon him, wouldn't read the name upon his breast. But the boy had seen him on the docks, looking down on the storm of medics and technicians helping unfreeze the civilians and move them to the enlarged medical wing.

       "According the reports," she sighed, "He's AWOL, abandoned his post in the heat of battle. He disobeyed direct orders to get that little girl off that planet, quite a feat even for a Spartan."

       "I'm well aware of the consequences he will face Beatrice." Drake rubbed his temples as his mind expanded and analyzed every possible out come, even though his conscience was no assailed by his past.

       "Go to him Joseph, if you have nothing else to give him, give him his life." She sighed, her voice was softer now, a voice that was reserved for this inner sanctum, long hidden like their private affairs. Long hidden away from the rest of his world, Beatrice had loved him thirty years ago, given him his only solace amidst the pain that consumed him. She knew the truth of this, and of the son he had given away. She knew the pain that had consumed him after his clone son died so suddenly, and his wife confronted him. He had lied to her, and she had known it. They had grown cold and distant, and she raised their other sons on her own on Earth. But they had never lost their rings, he always wore that gold band, she mused, as a reminder of his guilt rather than out of devotion.

       "Hard to find the words to say to the boy you gave away." Joseph sighed. For the first time in many years his work refused to consume, give him relief from the terror of his conscience, from the loss of his family. He was in the highest echelons of ONI division Three for his ability, and his tenacity, but he was unlike many of their other top officers. He suffered in his dreams, and drowned them in scotch as the night came by.

      Joseph Drake stood without saying a word, the only thing to do was to go to that medical bay and see the boy now. To see the man that had grown from Scott Alexander Drake. To see the soldier that had been created by that mad bitch Halsey. He would see the look in his eyes when the boy saw his own father, the man who had chosen that life for him.

      Scott 079 sat on the operating table recovering from his surgery less than a day ago, he had eaten for the first time in three days and rested there amongst the wounded that filled the hospital. The medical wing was a temporary shelter for the civilians and marines, letting them have the beds, the couches, the seats, whatever could be handy for a place to rest. Public showers had been brought in to help fix the smell, and medical technicians had spent nearly a day working on his wounds. A sentry by the name of Justin, how he introduced himself, usually kept him company, calling Scott a hero for what he did.

      Today Justin wasn't there, Scott sat alone will a dull ache in his muscles, counting new scars on his naked chest. He at least had properly fitting clothing now, fatigues given to him from the Marine's own supply depot on the station. They lacked the softness of the dress whites he usually wore when out of his armor, and the strength his armor gave him when out of his whites. Kyoko was in her own private room here, received by the Rear Admiral personally and taken to the ONI division three living quarters. He didn't think about her much, more about Simmons the green Corporal and his men that were still alive. They were in their own military section of the medical wing, and he was isolated.

      He had been rubbing the shoulder wound for what seemed like hours when the doors parted and the old man in black came in. The piercing blue eyes that he had watched in the dock looked at him now. "Hello Scott," Joseph Drake addressed him, "do you know who I am?"

      Scott 079 looked at Rear Admiral Joseph Drake with his cold blue eyes and stood at attention with a salute: "Sir yes sir...." His voice was a still rasp from his throat and his mind ceased to function as the words came out. "You are Rear Admiral Joseph Drake sir... commanding officer of this station. Sir."

       "I'm your father Scott, at ease." Drake felt his own words falling on the tried and true military protocols drilled into him so many years ago as he sat down on that school and looked at the towering man that was his son. "My god... what did Halsey do to you?" His eyes traced his son's body, the patchwork of scars on his chest and arms, but his face so pristine and pale white, out of place from his mother's tan lustrous skin and dark black hair. They sat in silence eyeing one another; Scott's mind analyzed the man as best he could recall the details from the files he read.

       "I gave you up," Joseph finally broke the silence, "you know that now. You could have had a normal life, been a doctor like your brothers maybe. Your mother never forgave me."

       "It doesn't matter," Scott said pulling a tank top over his broad chest and finding the shirt left for him hanging on a hook, "this is the life I lead now. I've made my choice."

       "You mean going AWOL?" Drake replied as his son covered his body, slowly fastening the buttons with his large hands.

       "I meant fighting for the UNSC." Scott looked at his father again, his mind was racing over everything he had done in those suits of armor, pondering the exhilaration of battle he felt and the second sight he seemed to feel as his body reacted without his thinking. Everything he had ever done in war, how he was made for a battle that had never occurred, all seemed to rush into his mind. Drake sighed and looked at the x-rays projected on the monitors; his son's shoulder must have been mending well.

       "You're going to be a solder then." Drake stood and met the eyes of his son, "not a puppet?"

       "I follow orders, and Adrian Yu ordered me to save his daughter." Scott felt a sense of serenity in his words, as the left his mouth he felt more complete and directed. He would fight, he would be the Spartan on the battlefield, and there were no more questions, no more options to distract him.

       "You were ordered to protect the fusion plants with the other Spartans." Joseph countered his son, "you betrayed them, even if you did save these 150 you could have saved a whole planet."

       "I was ordered to kill the covenant hierarchs, to destroy myself and all of my brothers and sisters in the process." Scott felt a hardness in his voice, "I betrayed no one. I followed Yu's orders; I'm not a machine Admiral.... I'm a Soldier."

       "You mean going AWOL?" Drake replied as his son covered his body, slowly fastening the buttons with his large hands.

       "I meant fighting for the UNSC." Scott looked at his father again, his mind was racing over everything he had done in those suits of armor, pondering the exhilaration of battle he felt and the second sight he seemed to feel as his body reacted without his thinking. Everything he had ever done in war, how he was made for a battle that had never occurred, all seemed to rush into his mind. Drake sighed and looked at the x-rays projected on the monitors; his son's shoulder must have been mending well.

       "You're going to be a solder then." Drake stood and met the eyes of his son, "not a puppet?"

       "I follow orders, and Adrian Yu ordered me to save his daughter." Scott felt a sense of serenity in his words, as the left his mouth he felt more complete and directed. He would fight, he would be the Spartan on the battlefield, and there were no more questions, no more options to distract him.

       "You were ordered to protect the fusion plants with the other Spartans." Joseph countered his son, "you betrayed them, even if you did save these 150 you could have saved a whole planet."

       "I was ordered to kill the covenant hierarchs, to destroy myself and all of my brothers and sisters in the process." Scott felt a hardness in his voice, "I betrayed no one. I followed Yu's orders; I'm not a machine Admiral.... I'm a Soldier."

       "So you're going to keep fighting, keep going in this war?" Drake looked at his son, the last son he had, the only family he was allowed to have anymore."

       "If the navy will still have me," Scott knew the consequences of his actions full and well. But how would they deal with an AWOL Spartan, a conscript of no choice who had been mutated by their hands into the perfect killing machine, the greatest human warrior ever conceived or trained. "But I'm through with questions Father...." The words stung his mouth, and hurt more than anything as he gave up who he was.

       "I understand," Drake looked at his son one last time and remembered the day his wife had left him with his sons. The day those two boys had looked at him in disgust and hatred. How had she known what fate had become of their son? How could she have known the guilt that lay on his conscience from taking so many children away from their families and damning them to a pained death of botched surgery or burning away on worlds never seen? How could she know the cost that his position asked, the pains and prices of being in division three that he had endured? The moment when his five year old son disappeared into that blackness of the cold tube, how the rush of air from the transport craft taking off, and the cover up operation that would fail utterly in the eyes of his family. That was the day that changed both of their lives, as Joseph Drake gave up his family, and his humanity.

      "I'll be sending my report to Earth; your actions will be lauded. You saved Yu's daughter for the AI she had with her, a botanical assistant with detailed data on plant life that mapped the entire human colonies including Earth. Congratulations Scott, you're a hero." Drake walked to the exit, "this will be the only time we'll meet I'm sure. And for what it's worth I am sorry that this was done to you Scott." The doors opened with a swish of pneumatic pressure coming from their locks.

       "Don't be," Scott stood tall and looked at his father silhouetted by the white light from the hallway, "we are what we are, I would have been this even without you."

       "I'm glad I met you son, maybe one day this war will end because of men like you." Rear Admiral Joseph Drake walked away silently from the medical bay having looked his son in the eyes and seen the truth about him. The only son he had left was a soldier like he was, and had sacrificed everything to fight for the UNSC.

      Scott knew his decision was made, more than likely he would never see Earth, or Kyoko Yu again. He longed for the feel of his MJOLNIR armor on his body, but simply sat down, and a smile crossed his lips as he thought of the battles that would come. In the silence of his mind's eye he saw the covenant, and remembered the look of terror on the decrepit hierarch he had slain so many years ago. The power he felt and the incredible rush of combat and survival, he knew he needed to find the other Spartans and take the fight to the covenant. Adrian Yu floated in his memory and he recalled the man's kindly smile and the deceptive nature of his movements, how he had played on Scott's hostility to Halsey. How Scott had justified his own actions by the confusing logic of Yu and saved that girl. For what good he had done, it was time he accepted what he was. No more running.

      He now knew who he needed to end this war.

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