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Halo: Casualties of War

His name was Fred. He arrived on Reach when he was only seven. Torn away from his family, and brought to the military complex on Reach. There he was trained to be a soldier. Along with many others, he was a Spartan II. The most advanced warriors humanity has ever created.

Jericho VII System, 1400 hours, 1537.

Fred ran as the trailing bolts of plasma scorched the land. Spartans 29 and 78 were right with him. They were planning to go to the LZ, or what was left of it. The Banshee flyers and Ghosts were closing in on them. Three of the speedy purple Ghosts pulled ahead as if to crush the Spartans to the ground. The Ghosts were right behind them. Fred received two acknowledgement lights from Jack and Linda. All three of them agreed in silence as if their thoughts were connected.
Fred jumped onto a Ghost with a bewildered Elite in it. The Elite growled and reached for it's plasma pistol, but Fred managed to kick its helmet off and drain the Elite's combat suit's armor, allowing Fred to push it off of the Ghost. Spartan 78 did likewise, but had a little more difficulties like getting a jab into her stomach.
The remaining Ghost pulled closer to Jack, and at the last moment before impact, he sidestepped, and jumped onto the floating vehicle. Only there wasn't an Elite there. Instead, sat an apelike creature with dull gray skin- a Brute. Brutes aren't called that for no reason. They have immense muscular strength and will destroy anything that moves, but they also aren't too bright. They also have an insatiable thirst for violence. The Brute sat on the seat grinning, and pulled out its' red plasma rifle.
Jack quickly pulled his gun out of his holster. As he did that, the Brute managed to shoot Jack thirteen times, each time eating away another piece off of his armor. As Jack fumbled with his pistol, he managed to shoot it in the head, but instead of going through its' skull, the bullet ricocheted and flew off to the side. The Ghost momentarily lost balance as the mass of the Brute fell off. Luckily, the Brute got knocked out, so Jack did not have much trouble kicking it off. It quickly stabilized itself, and Jack sped off towards Fred and Linda.
The confused Elites shot overcharged plasma shots that merely singed the armor of Jack's Ghost. After it was clear that there was no way to catch up to them on foot, they just stood there, flabbergasted. They just stood there, until their Elite officer came up and started yelling at them in their strange alien tongue.
The Brute suddenly came to, and became enraged to see the humans had escaped. He punched one of the officer's mandibles out, and started thrashing about. They finally killed him with a grenade. There would be no witnesses. Nobody would ever know…or care.
***
"I hope we get there soon," Linda said. "Or else this piece of junk will crash to the ground."
"Yeah," Jack said.
"Don't worry, we'll make it," Fred replied. But he was as nervous as they were, because any minute the human fleet that was sent to protect Jericho VII until every surviving human was evacuated would be destroyed by the Covenant. The MAC (Magnetic Acceleration Cannon) guns could only do so much damage, while the Covenant's guided plasma could scorch through most human ships.
Then the Covenant will "glass" the planet, regardless of how many of their own are on it. The Spartans have seen it done over a hundred times on all planets inhabited by humans. First, the plasma will burn through the atmosphere and then the oceans will boil away. The ground will immediately turn to glass because of the heat. Forests will burn and mountains will collapse, until all that is left of the planet is a dead smoldering piece of glass in space.
Most of the Outer Colonies have been wiped out. No matter how hard the humans fought, the Covenant had slowly forced them back to the Inner Colonies. And even those were falling. The only ones that weren't discovered by the Covenant were the only ones still standing.
The only times the humans have won so far were when they outnumbered the Covenant three to one.
And now John's home planet was being attacked.
A sudden screech brought him back to reality. He looked at the ground which was littered with rocks. He must have hit a particularly big one. His Ghost's power supply was almost empty, so were 29's and 78's. Their Ghosts were drifting slowly to the ground.
Fred motioned them to stop and transfer all remaining power to the Ghost in best shape. They obeyed. Jack's ghost was screwed up after the battle with the Brute, while Fred's was scorched by plasma fire, so they rode shotgun on Linda's Ghost.
They rode on in silence.
Silently, Fred cursed to himself why he put his squad in danger and how they landed into this deep a mess. They were sent here to find any survivors in Verde Mountain. There were no survivors. Successfully, Linda sniped their way into the underground bunker that supposedly held human survivors. Instead of humans, they found a legion of Grunts, small 3-foot tall aliens who spoke with barks and squeals and wore those strange methane filled tanks on their back, festively feeding themselves on the corpses of humans and their fallen comrades. Somehow they got out of that hellhole alive with a dozen of Elites on their tales. At that moment the chase began. Those Elites radioed in for backup and then they got stuck in the midst of aliens. The only option left was to run, so they did. They survived only to land here. The main question is: where is here? He certainly hoped John's group was doing better.
The NAV point showed them where the pickup point would be. They followed to it for at least an hour. Nothing appeared.
After another twenty minutes or so, Linda spotted something. Fred and Jack exchanged glances. They both knew that Linda's vision was twice as good as theirs was. That is why John appointed her as sniper back in training. She also rarely smiled, and with her pale skin and black hair she almost looked like a ghost.
"Do you see anything?" Jack asked.
"Barely, but it looks like there is something. Can't make out what it is though," Linda replied.
When Fred finally saw the view, he was outraged.
"How could the Covenant take out an entire battalion of crack Marines?" he said.
"I don't know," Jack said. "But it looks like they took all those Covenant morons with them."
He was certainly right. There were hundreds of dead soldiers, both Covenant and Human. Along with them lay broken turrets, Pelican dropships, Warthogs, and other machinery. There were even a few Scorpion tanks intact!
"This certainly feels like a trap," Fred thought. Without any words, Fred showed a hand gesture to Linda to scan the area for any signs of enemy movement.
He didn't need to, because at that moment six Covenant dropships were coming in from the sky. Linda tried to pick off a few of their pilots, and succeeded. Two of the dropships collided and exploded in midair and sending off sparks from the closest dropship's plasma cannon.
Some of the Scorpion tanks roared into life and repositioned themselves to face the dropships. They opened fire and destroyed two of the remaining four dropships. A few Warthogs also started to shoot away at the remaining dropships, but they already unloaded their cargo. Two dozen of black-colored Special Ops Elites jumped out and pulled out their plasma swords.
Linda sniped four of them before they even had a chance to touch the ground. Fred checked his Assault Rifle. Jack fired away with his stolen plasma rifle he "acquired" from the Brute until it overheated. Jack cursed and got his pistol out and fired it.
The Elites dodged most of their bullets and ran toward the Ghost.
Fred tried to turn the Ghost on, but to his dismay it completely ran out of power.
The Elites were closing in. They started laughing and charged. Exposing their backs to the tanks however, was a big mistake.
Half of the Elites were blown apart by the blast from the tanks. The rest scattered.
Using this momentary distraction, Fred beckoned 29 and 78 to grab a nearby "Jackhammer" rocket launcher and some rockets by a dead soldier.
Jack smiled wickedly and with his blazing red hair and shining eyes he looked like a real pyromaniac. He took the launcher and readied both rounds.
"Say good night stupid monster!" Jack yelled as he fired the first round from his rocket launcher.
"Hope you never wake up!" He yelled after he shot the second rocket spiraling into the remaining Elites.
Linda kissed her last bullet and loaded it into her sniper rifle, and then aimed it so perfectly, that the last Elite did not even have time to stop running. He ran on for another five meters, then stumbled and collapsed in a heap.
"Well, that's the last of them. We won't see those uglies until we die." Jack said cheerfully.
Linda just looked at him and drew two of her fingers across her face, which was their symbol for a smile, as smiled very rarely.
***
"Those Covenant monkeys attacked us right after your squad left, ma'am. Ain't no one left of the 14th Division but us," Corporal Patterson said. He was not used to talking to a woman, never mind a teenager, with respect. It made him uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than being surrounded by a horde of battle-hardened enemies. It felt strange to talk to a young girl who can knock him out with one punch. Linda on the other hand felt quite the opposite. It felt good to her to have another human companion, besides Fred and Jack. And although she preferred to work alone, she couldn't help, but to feel warmth toward another human.
"Alright Corporal, how many of your men survived?" Linda asked.
"Fifteen including myself. Why are you asking, ma'am?" he replied. Linda ignored him.
"How many Warthogs? Are there any that could be repaired?" she asked.
"Three at the moment that are fueled up to the top and one that is empty. Two more can be fixed in an hour and-" Linda cut him off.
"We'll fix those two in twenty minutes. Corporal, you and your men find any heavy weapons and bring them here. Also try and transfer some of the fuel from the Scorpions to the Warthogs. If there is any sign of the Covenant, radio us and get back to your tanks," Linda ordered.
"Yes ma'am!" he snapped to attention.
In thirty minutes the Marines gathered all the weapons they could and came up with a pile big enough to fill ten pickup trucks, transferred most of their fuel to the Warthogs and gathered all the tanks into a group. They already figured out what would happen to them if they didn't work fast, and it wasn't a demotion. The will to live is to great to be stopped by a pile of rubble.
Meanwhile, the Spartans had repaired four more Warthogs than they intended to. They had to, because how else were they going to carry all the fuel and those extra weapons?
"Is everyone ready?" asked Fred over his headset. He heard everyone honking the horn on their Warthogs in unison as an acknowledgement.
"All right men, move out." He said.
All at once ten jeeps with machine guns and rockets started their engines and moved off in a delta pattern toward the red team pickup point toward the horizon.
***
"Marines, lock and load! We got somewhere to go!" Fred yelled.
He felt kind of like that General Rommel who commanded the German Army in North Africa back on mother Earth nearly six hundred years ago, Deja, their AI teacher, told them about during training.
Fred brushed his hand through his gleaming blonde hair. Part of it was scorched from plasma fire. "Oh well," he thought. "It'll grow back."
"Jack, Linda, I'm sending you the NAV point on your radar," he said.
Two green lights lit up on his HUD display.
"Each of you take three 'hogs and leave the fuel Warthog. It's empty. Take a third of the weapons and distribute them among the passengers of the 'hogs. If the Covenant hit Red Team's pickup point, they'll get one hell of a surprise."
Both Jack and Linda drew two of their fingers across their face- a smile.
***
Spartan 117 sensed that something would be wrong, and his instincts never failed. John felt a chill run up his spine. He and his squad approached the city center. Something didn't feel quite right. There was no Covenant patrol, anywhere. Everywhere except the sewers, that is where John was supposed to meet the remaining survivors. Perhaps the Covenant did not expect such resistance from the survivors. Kelly reported to John that the Covenant were finding Engineers and bringing them to study a box of explosives. Suddenly, John realized everything.
"The Covenant are going to nuke this city with our bomb!" he drew his conclusions out loud.
"You've got to be kidding, sir," Fahjad said in disbelief. " You don't think that the those pea-heads actually realized that we nuked Cote d' Azure?"
"The Covenant aren't idiots, and for all we know, they could have their own nukes," John said.
"Not with a Human radiation sign!" Kelly exclaimed.
"You're right. There are only the survivors that we have to find and evacuate before they nuke this city."
"That won't be necessary," Fajhad said, pointing to the blood streaked walls near them. Red blood. Human blood.
" Fine… Permission to evacuate granted," John said, "That is an order. Except I don't know how we are going to get out of this alive."
And even though he said that, everybody knew that somehow he would make it, even if the rest of them didn't. For some uncanny reason he was lucky.
***
John stumbled as the wounded soldier on his back started moaning and came to.
"Where am I?" he said.
"Quiet. You're getting transferred to a field hospital," John replied.
The soldier fell quiet, but still struggled to remain on 117's back. John knew that if he didn't get a medic in the next couple of hours, the soldier would die. But he would. They were near their pickup point, and it would only take half of an hour to get there and a couple minutes to set up the beacon.
Kelly ran ahead to plant the beacon. John cocked his rifle. There would be Covenant listening for them, but they had to risk it. If any allies were nearby, they would be there. If the Covenant even shows their nose here, they will get a face full of lead.
He gave Kelly the sign. Twenty seconds later, twenty Covenant dropships fell from the sky.
***
" There they are!" Jack exclaimed over the radio.
"Oh, no! Look at all those dropships!" Corporal Patterson muttered pessimistically.
"Marines, ready your 'Jackhammers' and Rocket Warthogs. On my mark shoot all the dropships and Covenant Wraiths and Ghosts out of the sky!" Fred yelled.
"Mark!" he bellowed.
A symphony of explosions, bangs, and flashes filled the air. In less than five minutes half of the descending dropships fell to the ground. One of the dropships sent missiles flying towards the rocket-firing humans. Two of the Warthogs were incinerated immediately, while a third one's tires melted, and it screeched and flipped as it attempted to brake.
Ten dropships got to ground safely. Among Elite officers were Grunts with the Fuel Rod Gun (the equivalent of a rocket launcher), Jackals (the bird-looking creatures that where weak, but with their shields on, they were pretty powerful in groups), and even a few colossal Hunters with Fuel Rod Guns implanted directly into their armor. Most of the Elites got into the Wraith mortar tanks and the speedy Ghosts. Half of them however, were blasted into bits by the last rounds from the rocket launchers.
"We ran out of rockets sir!" Pvt. Griggs told Corporal Patterson who just finished issuing commands.
"I can see that, Private, now lets crush their alien bones with this jeep!"
"Yes sir!" Griggs told him. But what he told over the radio amused Corporal Patterson.
"Give those dang monsters a beating they will never forget. Straight orders from the Corporal himself: Crush their flimsy bones into the god dang ground!" Griggs ordered over the intercom.
Patterson chucked, "Yes, this is a fine Marine," he told himself out loud, but quietly. "If I ever gets myself out of this planet, I'll be sure to promote him." He could almost swear that Griggs' features barely showed a smile.
The battle was nothing to be actually smiling about. They were losing- badly. John got himself ready to jump onto the speeding Warthog. And to his surprise he found that Linda and Fred were already in it.
" I just received a transmission from our dropships. They're going to land five kilometers south of our present position. We need to get all the soldiers we can out of here," John said.
"Negative sir. There are three wounded to one fully functional solider. We have to get the good soldiers out. The rest can create a diversion," Linda said.
"A diversion against what?" John retorted
"There are Banshees flying around all over the battlefield! If we leave, we are sure to get at least half of their forces on our tails!" John said.
"It's risky but it's the only chance we have," Linda said.
"No. I cannot leave the wounded here, John. Leave me if you must," Fred said.
"That is an order, Fred," John looked at him with an ice stare. Fred fell quiet but still looked bitter.
"Corporal Patterson, get all of your wounded soldiers on some of the Warthogs. All of the rest follow me, including you…sir." John ordered. A moment of silence then:
"Yes sir, Master Chief."
A third of the Warthogs sped off south. The rest held their positions. Five Banshees sped off after them.
***
"Get onto your dropships! Go! Go! Go!" John yelled as the Pelicans slowly touched the ground and opened their hatches.
"Fahjad, Kelly and Fred, help me secure those Warthogs to the dropships!" John said over his headset. He got three green lights in return.
"Everyone ready? Good!" John asked everybody. "Close the hatch, and take us away Destiny 113," he said as he read the name of the Pelican dropship.
"Affirmative," Said a soft, but firm female voice. "Ready for liftoff in 5… 4…3…2…1… NOW!"
The Pelicans' short stubby wings flipped 90 degrees and four jet engines propelled the craft into the air. The Banshees were right behind them. Suddenly, all of the Banshees opened fire to the dropship with Jack inside.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" yelled Fred as the Pelican with Jack exploded underneath them.
"Shut the heck up!" yelled John at Fred.
"You need to control yourself! Don't let your feelings show! We're Spartans! The best soldiers! Do you think that I don't care if one of my soldiers dies? Well, I do, and unlike you, I know how to contain my emotions. Get a grip on yourself! My home planet is being glassed and I don't care, because the Covenant glassed every other friggin system I know!" John looked at Fred with disgust.
"Now calm down," John said quietly.
"Yes sir, Master Chief, sir," Fred responded like a machine.
"Good. Now Fred, I would like to ask you a favor…"

REACH military complex, planet Reach, Epsilon Eridani System, 0600 hours.

"Spartans, I would like to give you a test. Perhaps the hardest one of all. You might loose some of your comrades today. It will not involve the Covenant. It will involve yourself and your mind. Each of you will be given a series of injections today. Each one will make you stronger and more powerful than ever before. That is all."
"At ease," he added. CPO Mendez was surprised how much those little boys and girls have grown into a highly organized and deadly killing machine. Except that Dr. Halesly picked the best. He still thought that abduction and replacement of children with clones was a bit unorthodox, but if it was for the good of humanity… Heck, if he were told he could save all the humans by jumping off of a cliff, he'd do it.
He just felt that losing some of them and mutilating others to have a batch of elite humans was a waste of good people. Thank god the mutilated ones will not suffer alone, but help others with their brains of tacticians. He reluctantly signed Dr. Halsey's proposal that all of the SPARTAN II's that who should die will always be marked as "Missing in Action" for military moral purposes. He knew that the Government would want the people to see that SPARTANS are invincible.
***
Fred was quite intrigued by CPO Mendez's short speech. "How would they lose comrades if all they had to do was fight with their own brain?" he thought. "Must be some sort of drug," he thought. "He always made some twist to the rules during training. This had to be another trick. Maybe to see how we stand to interrogation."
He silently got onto the medical table. There were different vials and syringes and a few monitors, but no scalpels or any tools of that sort.
"They aren't going to cut me up," he thought.
The lights dimmed and three projectors lit up on the ceiling pointing at him. The nurses strapped him down. All of them took a syringe and injected it into each of his muscles. Then the bones. Then he was turned upside down and he felt his neck sort of melt away.
"So they are going to cut me up anyway," He thought.
The nurses sliced his neck open and implanted a microchip. Fred felt as if some piece of mercury slithered into his brain. Then just as fast, it crawled back down his neck and it disappeared. He felt nauseated and quickly fainted.
He awoke in a room with steel doors. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were still cuffed to the bed. He tried to move them. Surprisingly, the cuffs broke.
"How strange," he thought.
He examined his body. Everything looked new. Muscles were bulging four times as much as he had them before the surgery. He felt a sense of vertigo and fell. He hit his elbow, but surprisingly did not feel anything. He tried to get up, and accidentally nudged a vase of flowers that was near his bed.
The vase wobbled and fell like it was in slow motion. Fred reached out his hand, half expecting not to catch it, but to his surprise, his hand shot out three times as fast as it would have before and caught the vase just before it hit the ground.
Suddenly, the lights turned off, and everything went dark, but only for a moment. His eyes quickly adjusted to what would have been before pitch black. He could see everything like it was in dim light. Then the lights came back on.
The doors unlocked, and Fred stepped outside into the gleaming white corridor. He looked to the left. There was a wall. To the right was a hall with rooms just like his. He went toward the other end. Nobody was there. He opened the door.
To his surprise he found himself in the laboratory where his surgery was performed. He went on. He saw a monitor with Doctor Halsey in it. He approached it carefully.
"Hello, Fred," she said.
"What in hell have you done to me?" he asked as he finally noticed that everything seemed smaller than it was.
"You have been augmented. Any side effects?" she said as she bit her lip.
"Nothing, except that I feel stronger, taller, and for some strange reason things are moving slower than usual."
She laughed and said, "That is just your faster reflexes."
"My what?" he said.
" I do not understand ma'am," he said. "What exactly have you done to me?"
She looked grief stricken for a moment, then she quickly regained her composure and said, " We injected calcium carbide, a chemical we created that makes bones almost unbreakable. Muscular Protein steroids that accelerate the growth of muscles, a small platinum pellet that contains HGH catalysts, and I will tell you something about it later," she smirked. "We also injected a chemical that increases the blood flow through you eyes that makes you see better. I'm sure you've already figured that out. And the final thing we added was an extra dosage of dendrites to your brain that made you, well, quicker."
"Have you ever done this before?" Fred asked.
"Only on monkeys. The products we used did not have the desired effect on some of the subjects and the doses affected humans more than they do monkeys," she answered.
"Are you saying that my teammates died?" he asked horrified.
Doctor Halsey bit her lip again and said cautiously, " Half of you made it through, while a third of the other half died, and the others were mutilated. They will still help UNSC, however."
Fred stood silent for a moment taking everything in. Then he exploded in a burst of rage. He started smashing everything in the lab; he fell over a dozen times. He virtually leveled everything in the lab to a pile of rubble. Then he collapsed in a heap. He then started muttering to himself, " Don't show your emotions. I'm a super-soldier. I'm a Spartan. I am the most advanced warrior." Then he fainted.
***
He woke up in space. He read the letter that was on his table near his bed. It said:

Dear Fred,
I am so sorry about your loss. You and the other remaining Spartans will go to the funeral ceremony tomorrow. After that, you will start micro gravity therapy.
Get Well,
Dr. Halesy.

He couldn't stay conscious, and he melted away into darkness.
***
The next day he met John on the way there looking quite solemn. Fred had the same demeanor. In fact, everybody had the same demeanor.
CPO Mendez stepped forward in front of the long row zinc coffins and gave a long, sorrowful, speech. Every single coffin was ejected into space at once. Fred looked off into the distance and thought to himself, "No human is invincible, so I must accept losses, no matter how big they are. I am one of the selected ones that lived to die another day. And until that day I will fight 'till the end and take as many of those monsters with myself."





Based on Halo: Combat Evolved and the books by Eric Nylund :First Srike, and the Fall of Reach.

NOTE: it is illegal to pass this document as your own. If you wish to use this document, email me at www.syatsko1@juno.com, or syatsko1@juno.com. .

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