Halo: Thin Line

Chapter 1
Huff, Huff, Huff, Huff, sounded through the dense forest, Jamie-B295 ran as fast as she could, trying to find a good position to overlook the base. Climbing up yet another ledge, she found a break in the trees, wide enough for her to set up fand provide overwatch for her team. Taking her SRS-99AM off her back, she took a crouching position and crossed her arms, nestling the gun in them as she zoomed in on the base, looking for her teammates tags.

“Gotcha” she whispered to herself once she spotted Bodark getting up from a brawl with a Brute. However, her attention was drawn when an Elite Ultra came up on Bodark, two energy swords drawn.

Taking in a breath, she felt a creeping unease, her heart rate climbing.

She fired, the recoil of the gun making her rock every so slightly. Peering back through her scope she watched for the shot, waiting for it to hit the Elite, but instead it struck the ground behind it. Her heart dropped as the Elite charged, Bodark tried to fight it off while Jamie tried to compose herself to shoot again, but it was too late.

The Ultra impaled Bodark on its sword, dropping her corpse to the ground and headed towards the garage where Jericho and Arlo were. Jamie was in shock, trying to regain her breath and trying to call Jericho and Arlo on the comms.

“Jericho, Arlo, Come in! Bodark is down, there is an Ultra comin-ARRRHHHH” Jamie was cut off, a horrible yell coming from the comms, Jericho’s vitals disappearing soon after and Arlo’s after him. The Elite walked out of the Hangar and turned to lock eyes with Jamie who tried desperately go fire her gun and kill the bastard.

“Fucking fire! You piece of shit!” she roared, pulling the trigger repeatedly, despite her struggles the Elite merely chuckled, its voice somehow being heard by her as it continued killing.

“NOOOO!” she roared a final time, her vision fading to blackness

---

Jamie awoke in a panic, scrambling to reach the release lever above her. Finding it she yanked it and threw herself out, onto the cold metal floor, taking several calming breaths as she looked around the empty cryo bay. Noticing that she was the only person in the bay, she hurried to the nearby lockers and put on a simple, if somewhat small, jumpsuit. She felt a cold rush up her spine, her mind flashing images of her teammates dying. Shaking her head, Jamie decided that she was never going to risk that ever happening and headed for the armory without another thought.

Walking through the dull metal halls of the ship, Jamie tried to keep her mind at bay, reassuring herself that she’d be back with Kilo Team with a few weeks. Despite her inner turmoil, she still managed to make it to the armory without getting lost and quickly set about donning her SPI Mark II armor. After putting on and locking her body armor into place, moving around and stretching to make sure it was fitted right, she then took a moment to look at her reflection in the visor of her helmet.

“Things sure have changed,” she mumbled to herself as she studied her face. Over the years of endless training, studying and preparing, she had never taken the time to actually see just how much she has changed.

She noticed that her once buzz-cut blonde hair was now slowly growing out, no doubt due to her time in cryo, and she also noticed how her face had changed overall. Her jaw had become more pronounced and sharp while her eyes seemed more pronounced as a result, their amber color standing out sharply against the rest of her face. Shaking her head lightly and giving a huff, she stood up, grabbing and M392 and SRS-99AM from one of the racks and headed for the small gun-range within the armory.

Walking up to a bench in one of the alleys, Jamie shouldered her DMR, activating the course for holo-targets at 500m. Taking a ready position with her barrel aimed at the floor, she kept her eyes down as the countdown sirens sounded.


 * BAAP*


 * BAAP*


 * BEEP*

At the beep, she lifted her head and rifle, snapping to the first target, watching it turn red as her shot connected. Taking a breath, she snapped the next three targets, taking breaths between her shots to keep her aim stable, the flash of her muzzle however caused her to think back to her dream, causing her to miss the last target.

“Shit.” she growled out, lowering her rifle and the screen next to her projecting a 9/10 on targets neutralized.

‘Stupid fucking dreams,’ she thought to herself, thoroughly annoyed that some one time dream had shaken her up this much.

“You sure you’re up for this kid?” came a voice, cutting through Jamie’s thoughts.

She turned to see her teammate for the coming mission, Anthony-A002, leaning against a stack of crates with his arms crossed. Anthony was nice enough company and a skilled spartan in his own right, though his seniority as an Alpha Company spartan saw him being unsure of Jamie as this was her first mission outside her company.

“You’re not that much older than me Tony, I’ve been through my fair share of deployments.” Jamie smirked, enjoying as Anthony cringed at her calling him ‘Tony’.

“Fair point, though I think battlefield experience may speak otherwise.” he shot back, nearing Jamie who had swapped to her SRS.

“For real though, you sure you’re good? You’ve seemed out of it since you entered the armory,” Anthony asked in a softer and more hushed tone when he was closer.

Jamie smiled slightly under her helmet at his worry but responded with a punch to his shoulder

“I’m fine Anthony, just a bad thaw is all.” she queued up another set of holo targets, this time at 1000m.

“If you say so,” Anthony replied with some skepticism returning a punch to her shoulder.

“Now get your ass into one of the alleys, I’m not the only one who should be keeping their aim sharp,” Jamie finished deploying her bipod and taking aim, hearing Anthony mumble something about being a ‘pretty damn good shot’.

The next two hours would see Jamie and Anthony competing for who could land the most perfect runs of the range with Jamie edging out a victory at 12-10 and setting a new record for fastest course clear. Anthony however argued otherwise.

“I was taking it easy on you y’know.” he placed his DMR on his back.

“I’m sure you were,” Jamie replied, sitting on a bench behind him, cleaning out her DMR.

“Hey n-Spartans B295 and A006 are to report to the Drop Bay with your equipment, repeat, Spartans B295 and A006 report to the Drop Bay.”

Looking away from the direction of the speaker, Jamie and Anthony gave each other a curt nod and set about gathering their things. Jamie quickly reassembled the in her hand DMR and hurried back to the weapon racks to grab her personal one from a nearby weapon crate. Opening it, she gave it a once over, checking her scope and sound dampener and loading in a magazine, Anthony meanwhile had found his BR55HB, spec’d with similar attachments to Jamie’s DMR.

“There you are,” she thought, opening another one of the weapon crates to reveal her custom SRS-99AM sniper rifle. Equipped with a detachable sound dampener, larger cheek rest and more rigid bipod, Jamie lifted her sniper out of the box and gave it a quick once over to make sure it was fine before unwrapping the pendant Kilo had given her from the stock and placing it around her neck and then mounting the sniper on her back.

Having finished gathering her gear, Jamie looked to Anthony who tossed her a combat knife which she sheathed before heading out after him to the drop bay, both of them grabbing an M6/SOCOM on their way out. The two of them jogged down the halls, narrowly avoiding various crew on their way to the drop bay, Jamie felt an inkling of nervousness creep up her spine as the distraction of her shooting contest with Anthony faded away. Arriving at the door to the drop bay, she steeled herself walking in after Anthony, spotting their mission handler.

“Good to see you Spartans.” his gravelly voice came.

Lieutenant Cassius Hayes had been operating as a mission handler for ONI ever since the war started, he’d served with Spartans before and knew all too well just how resilient they proved to be. Though with how leisurely these two seemed to be taking it, he had his doubts.

“We’ll be dropping out of slipspace within the hour and we went over this last week, so I’ll keep it brief.” a hologram loaded up of a planet, the name ‘Toison’ projected next to it.

“The colony of Toison fell in June 2544, while that may be par for the course at this point, the issue this time around comes from the fact they didn’t glass it, not all the way at least.”

The hologram changed to show specific sections and population centers of Toisons most populated continent which had been glassed, yet the other continent seemed untouched.

“The continent of Garan housed the colony’s main mining centers, but more importantly,” he paused to increase the size of the hologram, revealing a building within the dense forests.

“That means ONI JEWEL Base is still intact.”

Jamie glanced at Anthony in confusion, the details of the ‘special target’ having not been revealed to them before. Before Hayes could continue, Anthony interjected.

“Sir, do we have any info on survivors of the purpose of the base?”

“I’m afraid there are none that we know of, the base was stated to have provisions for about 10 months and it’s well past that. If there are any survivors, they are to be guarded until you can be relieved.”

“And the purpose of the base?” Jamie asked again

“I’m afraid that’s classified, 295. Your objective is to secure the facility and hold out until a sufficient force can be mustered to retake the world. Be advised that this is not a guns blazing mission. You keep yourselves hidden and quiet, the last thing we need is the facility getting destroyed, understood?”

“Yes, Sir!,” they responded with salutes.

“Good, now get to your pods.” he began heading out of the drop bay.

Waiting for Lt. Hayes to exit the bay, Jamie then turned to face Anthony.

“And here I thought we’d be hunting some high value target through the jungle,” Anthony piped up

“A classified ONI base being our camp for the foreseeable future, doesn’t sound that bad,” Jamie voiced as she mulled over the details they had been given.

“Unless you’re looking to not die from boredom.” Anthony chuckled

“Depends how you spend your time, plus, there is still a bunch of covies snounting around the area. May not be as boring as you think,” she and Anthony paused in front of the two open SOEIVs to check their gear.

“Alright, a bet then. If there are some covies, you get to coordinate the sparring on the trip back-” Anthony wagered.

“You sure you can handle losing that many runs on the range,” Jamie interjected.

“If you’ll let me finish” Anthony paused to get a nod from Jamie “Thank you, but if I’m right and we don’t see shit, I get your sniper” he finished, Jamie snapping to attention at the mention of her rifle.

“No deal, not with this.” she locked her sniper into the weapon rack in the pod.

“Alright, alright, just thought you were sure of the intel you were going over.” Jamie stopped again and turned to Anthony, almost feeling the innocent smirk under his helmet.

Gripping the barrel of her rifle tightly, she reconsidered.

“Alright, I’m in.” she punched Anthony’s shoulder in agreement.

“Firstly, ow. Secondly alright, a deal is a deal, see ya planetside.” he closed the pod door.

Jamie huffed in annoyance, a slight pang of guilt shooting through her at wagering her rifle from Kilo.

‘I got this, I got this’ she thought to herself, pushing out the creeping anxiety from her dream which bubbled up, instead focusing on the pendant around her neck when the Captain came on the comms.

“This is Captain Belia, all stations prepare to drop out of slipspace.” “006, 295, this is Hayes. You’ll be dropping as soon as we exit slipspace, the ship will go silent immediately after so comms will be quiet. Good hunting,” he finished as Jamie began to steel herself for the drop.

The ship shuddered violently when it exited slipspace, however just when the launch sequence began, there another massive shudder. Before she could try asking Anthony anything, the comms burst to life once more.

“All hands, All hands! Battlestations, we’ve been engaged,” came the captain’s voice, in the background numerous reports could be heard in the commotion on the bridge.

“Sir, engines 2 and 3 are down!, secondary reactors are overhea-Crew quarters have been hit, I repeat, hull breach in the crew quarters!”

Hearing the chaos on the comms, Jamie tried to contact Anthony through some hand signals via the pod cameras.

Can you open yours?” Pointing to the door and pushing it, he seemed to understand what she meant and shook his head.

Before she could try and reach for the emergency release, the captain’s voice came through again, this time tinged with distress and anger.

“Sir, we are losing power, main reactor is faili-Enact Cole Protocol, Launch the Pods, get those Spartans groundside, NOW!” was the last thing heard by Jamie as she was thrust upwards when the pods launched.

Trying to get her bearings from hitting her head, Jamie looked out from the window, Toison coming into view as she neared it. Looking to her side she could see Anthony in his pod, bracing himself in his seat, giving her some comfort, but almost as soon as it came, did it fall away. A huge bright flash erupted from above their pods, the prowler having detonated from the damage and in its wake came bolts and flashes of purple and blue plasma, striking several pods and destroying them.

Looking back down to Anthony, Jamie saw him look to her before his face disappeared, a series of pods crashing together away from hers.

“No….no, no no, no, Anthony, Anthony! Come in!” she called into the mic, bashing her fist against the screen, the planets atmosphere coming into view.

“This can’t be happening, no way in hell,” she tried to reason, stopping briefly when the chute deployed. Looking out one last time, all she saw was the smoldering wreckage of other pods against the green and brown landscape.

“Fucking shit!” she snapped, kicking the inside of the pod, forgetting her imminent landing for a moment, images of Kilo dying flying through her brain once more.

Before she could get her bearings, the scenery gave way to a dense tree canopy, the sounds of snapping branches and trees being audible even inside the pod. Jamie braced as best she could, but another pod struck hers from above, causing her pod to be knocked off course and causing her to bash her skull against her seat, dazing her and the final landing only seconds later, sending her head into the glass of the pod, knocking her out.