Centroid

Summary
''After a costly assault in Covenant controlled space, the Spartan survivors return to face a new challenge. Now, as ONI Spartan specialists, Spartans Annalee and Drew will face threats they never imagined they would face when they set off to fight their counter-crusade against the continuously approaching Covenant onslaught.''

''This is a story of loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and learning who you are. Taking on multiple perspectives, Centroid will take you to a time before the Fall of Reach, when the Human-Covenant War was at its most dire, and everything action hung in the balance. This story will also be the basis for the Centroid Continuum.''

Chapter 1: The Survivor
1350 Hours, June 19, 2545 (Military Calendar)/ Billar Pavonis System, Covenant Controlled Space

Annalee cycled through her rangefinder in quick succession, peering down at the teams of Grunts and Jackals that littered the red, dirt trail leading to the Covenant relay. This was it.

After spending the last week crawling through conduits, stowing away in crates, clambering up rocks, and over fissures, she had finally managed to ghost her way up the mountain trail to the Covenant Citadel—close enough, anyway. After carefully and quietly scouting the surrounding area, she had found a rock overhang with a prominent panoramic view of the trail, Citadel, and the staging camp which surrounded it. Now, days after finding the overhang, it had become her refuge from the buzzing army surrounding her. Not only that, it had also proven to be the perfect overlook to plan an infiltration. Admittedly her own situation was hardly as perfect.

Annalee slowly brought the rangefinder to her side. Softly, and quietly, a magnet secured it to her armor with a metallic click. She paused, staying still to make sure that she hadn’t garnered any unwanted attention from her friends below her. She didn’t dare to test the senses of a few dozen Jackals in such close proximity.

As she was, she knew she couldn’t take on the Covenant forces in the region—electronic intelligence had estimated its strength at upwards of ten-thousand strong. And, since the initial UNSC attack on the support structures, Covenant forces had been arriving for days to reinforce the Citadel. Maybe they knew she was still alive? Unlikely, she considered. She estimated at least a third of the regional battalions were now there: more than what was needed to defend themselves from a single person. It seemed their intelligence collection was as lacking as hers. They were genuinely surprised.

Annalee had no backup. As far as she was aware, she was the last surviving UNSC unit on the ground. Being that she was deep in Covenant controlled space, contacting the Prowler ship in system—if it was still even there—ran a high risk of alerting Covenant vessels of her location. One slip up, and she wouldn’t see a strike coming; she would be dust before she knew she was in danger. The thought made her wince.

Assuming she was the last alive to complete the mission, she remained painfully silent—there wasn’t any need for pointless sacrifice now. Without the proper tools and manpower to complete the original mission parameters, she decided she would improvise: sabotage what she could, and hope it silenced the monstrous communications relay that stood before her.

Satisfied with what she had seen, Annalee slowly pushed her way back beneath the stone overhang. As she reached the narrow rear of the overhang, obscured from the outside, she sat upright, stretched her arms and neck, and took off her helmet. She took a deep breath and her vision steadied—she had been holding it on and off for hours to avoid moving as much as possible.

It was curious to her that the moon had a breathable oxygen content. Though, after a minute of breathing particularly sulfuric air, the novelty wore off and she returned to the properly saturated atmosphere of her helmet. Were this anywhere else, she quietly admitted, her oxygen scrubbers would have been unable to keep her air from becoming toxic after only a day. But, the air system had been able to collect more than enough ambient, oxygenated atmosphere to keep her breathing. She had to count her blessings at this point. Counting.

She began again to take inventory of her supplies—what remained of them, anyway.

The back of the overhang had become her “armory”, with her weapons propped up against the rock face, and her ammo and pouches laid flat on the ground. First, she studied her reconnoitered Covenant Carbine and counted the cylindrical power packs that paired with it. Her squad commander, Joel, once had taken one from the field during a recon mission. Each of their squad took turns learning to use it. Between Joel and her, they taught the rest of the squad the ins and outs of the weapon. But Joel, ever the marksman, flourished with it like any sharpshooter would. He would have been the perfect soldier to wield it, but she would have to make due on her own. She had also taken more than enough cylinders for a squad of trigger-happy Jackals. For what skill Joel would have had on her, she would make up for it with more ammo. The issue, ultimately, was that the carbine was far from a suppressed weapon. One shot would alert every Covenant unit along the trail and hillside. She decided she would take it with her, but swore to use it only if things went haywire.

The remainder of her weapons were much more underwhelming: an assault rifle which had had it’s ammo counter blown off by a plasma bolt, a combat knife, and her standard suppressed sidearm. She had only one extra magazine for her pistol, and the assault rifle was now down to twenty rounds. Worse, though, the firing mechanism on the rifle had deteriorated and often required that every few rounds be racked by the bolt due to the damage—she decided it was no longer useful, much to her chagrin. She would have to make do with her pistol and combat knife.

Last, she checked the belted ammo pouch. She fished out two snack cakes; it was the last of her food. If miracles existed, Annalee considered that it was a miracle she had any food at all. Seeing as the mission hadn’t been designed to last long, virtually none of the squads had prepped any. She happened upon the cakes accidentally and had been rationing them ever since. They had helped, at least a little bit, over the last few days when hunger had really started to set in. She was indebted to Ahmed for having brought enough for her entire squad. When she had grabbed his ammo belt, she hadn’t known, or cared they were there. Now, though, they were immeasurably important to her survival. She imagined he had likely envisioning doling them out when they were no longer planetside. In that moment, she wished he were still there. His outlook had always been positive, and she knew she was in need of a bit more of that.

The last of his pouches were empty. She set the belt back down.

Sparse loadouts were not foreign to her, but often in those situations she had her squadmates to rely on. Now she was alone, hungry, and outgunned. She had trouble imagining what she could really hope to accomplish on her own. She wasn’t convinced of much at all. But, considering the amount of Spartans—friends—who had died to get her this far, she felt it her duty to see things through.

She sat at the back of the overhang, and rested against the stone. She set a timer for an hour, then set her motion tracker to wake her if it detected anything which came too close to her position. Sleep was almost unheard of considering her surroundings, but she was still human. She would force herself to sleep, if need be—she needed the rest. She closed her eyes, trying to drown out the cacophony of alien tongues, clattering of equipment, and ever present hum of pulsing plasma energy.

She gripped her pistol tight, and nodded off. For a short while, she was at ease.

***

0500 Hours, June 20, 2545/ Annalee’s Crow's Nest

Annalee slung the carbine along the back of her SPI armor—a staple for Spartan-III’s—and inched towards the ledge with her Automag pistol in hand. The nameless moon she was on had finally fallen into darkness after having been in daylight for the last week. Just as the Office of Naval Intelligence—known as ONI—had suggested, the moon was tidally locked to the planet above. The planet, Billar Pavonis 4, shone only as a sliver of a brown waning crescent in the sky. Her suit calculated the ambient light to be lower than 1 Lux ; virtually next to nothing. What more, Annalee could now expect for it to remain this dark for weeks. She wouldn’t need that much time. She wouldn’t last there that long, regardless.

The Covenant Citadel that three teams of Beta Company were tasked to infiltrate and destroy, was a part of a larger Slip Space communications relay inside of Covenant controlled space. Golf, November, and Oscar Teams had been sent to investigate the relay in the hopes the UNSC might be able to reverse engineer their detection technology, or gather other intel on Covenant fleet movements.

Intelligence had suggested the structure was akin to an interstellar telegraph system, something Humanity had toyed with but never perfected. The Covenant had mastered Slip Space in ways Humanity could only hope to partially match before the alien menace inevitably descended further into the Inner Planets. Annalee, and the other Spartans were simply trying to accelerate the research process, hoping that the tides may finally turn in Humanity’s favor. It increasingly appeared that they were running out of time.

In the new dark, the Citadel was lit solely by the pulsing blues of plasma conduits, as well as the accompanying pinks and purples of assorted camplights and terminals scattering the surrounding area. Periodically, the central column of the structure would charge and fire pulsewaves of laser-emitted datastreams through Slip Space. Annalee had timed these pulses to a mean time of two hours between pulses, and had watched minutes prior how it illuminated the area, washing it in a white-blue glow. To avoid detection, she would need to move in between pulses.

With the dark masking her, Annalee crawled to the edge of the overhang to take one last look at the trail. The third watch was on time.

A watch squad of Grunts and Jackals patrolled the length of the trail every seven hours. They had just made their second loop and would be gone for the next forty minutes, more than enough of an opening to approach the Citadel camp from the trail mouth. Then, all that remained between Annalee and the structure was a few hundred Covenant units strewn randomly across the few hundred meters between them. It was an obvious killzone—no man’s land in more than one way. But, as Annalee had observed: it was a complacent killzone.

She estimated at maximum, she would have a half-hour to reach a gate into the Citadel structure. She set and displayed a timer on her HUD, and began the countdown. It was time to go.

Peering again over the side of the rock, Annalee saw what she expected. Below her was the end of the trail and, sure enough, the squad of Grunts she had kept tabs on during her stay—entirely accounted for. The squad had settled in an hour before, and Annalee, seeing they were now completely unawares, was finally satisfied. She released the safety on her gun, vaulted over the side of the cliff towards the flimsy canopy roof, slashing through the tarpaulin-like material and straight into the methane pit where they slept.

She landed square on the skull of a Grunt. There was a sharp, muffled crack as the Grunt’s skull splintered into fragments and was crushed beneath the force of Annalee’s strike. It’s lungs lazily released methane through a gurgle of blue blood and brain matter. Another Grunt, nearby, stirred; awoken, but not yet alert. She dove at the Grunt, grabbing it’s neck and violently snapping it completely around. It softly slumped over and died without another sound. The remaining pack was completely unaware, and remained asleep and undisturbed by the commotion.

Annalee remained still, and partially prone, aiming at the head of the nearest Grunt. She glanced at the top of the pit. The material of the roof kept its bubble shape, save for the human sized flap which she had made on her way down. It leaked, but the flap only quietly fluttered as methane lazily escaped through the opening; the tent simply continued pumping more gas to maintain the pressure within. No alarms—the Jackal sentries had missed her. For now, she was in the clear. She quickly and silently dispatched the remaining Grunts so that none survived to sound an alarm.

The access doors for the pit hissed and opened as Annalee neared them. The doors opened facing the rest of the camp, and the trail was now behind her. Although the ground around the Citadel was mostly open, it served as a staging area for patrols and supply drops. Vehicles, crates, methane tents, barriers, barracks, and other assorted equipment gave Annalee just enough hiding places to move through the shadows towards the Citadel. Her SPI armor’s photo-reactive plating also did it’s part, making her appear only as a silhouetted shadow amongst the dark purple huts and pylons of the Covenant camp when she needed it.

Most of the Grunts she saw about were completely oblivious or enjoying their sleep cycle. The deadlier Jackals had their eyes set upon the horizon, and not the interior of the camp. A lucky break. The darkness had lulled most of the Covenant into a false sense of security, she gathered, which allowed her to move about without much worry of drawing their attention. The sun had seemingly set on the events of the week, for them.

As she meticulously made her way through the camp, Annalee came to a halt behind a cluster of weapons crates. As she had been crossing through the camp, she periodically caught snippets of a sound on the wind, and stopped to listen. The sound she had heard in this instance was more constant than the others. It was obvious once she focused on it that it was hardly the background noise she initially thought: it was the undeniably distinct whine and chug of a Covenant drop ship. A small hut—a barracks—was close, and in any direction, it was the only structure with a roof she could reach for cover. The turrets on any Covenant dropship would be able to detect Annalee with thermal sights. Even with her heightened senses and speed, the heavy plasma turrets would rip her apart easily. She had no doubt.

She expanded her suit’s motion tracker to max range. Among the sea of movement around her, it caught a large blip at the edge of its radius. Intently adjusting her suit’s HUD to track the contact, it was obvious it was approaching. Fast . Too fast to scan the barracks for life. She had to get inside, then and there. Hard, she pushed off the ground and sprinted with all her power towards the door, hoping her suit’s camouflage would keep her out of sight. Her feet barely touched the ground as she hit her stride.

Halfway to the barracks, she glanced around to see if she had been spotted. No firing, no alarms, no alien shrieks or howls. She didn’t believe that a Jackal would miss the movement she had made, even when she was in camouflage—she was convinced that she had to have been seen, and the alarms were moments away from sounding. She tensed as she approached the door, waiting for a plasma beam to catch her torso; waiting for a stream of bolts to scorch her back.

Nothing came. She was going to make it.

With a small length to spare, Annalee pushed hard off the ground and lunged. Her shoulder slammed into the door of the barracks as a Phantom dropship flew fast and low over her head. The Phantom kicked up a large cloud of red dust and silt, and the sound of the pass masked the clang of the barracks door snapping open. The cloud quickly rushed in with Annalee, and the few dozen Grunts and Jackals immediately inside the door were stunned and blinded by the sandy wash rushing in. Easy targets.

Before they could gather themselves, Annalee had emptied her suppressed pistol, under the cover of the cloud, into twelve Jackals and Grunts—each died as a single round caught their head. With her pistol emptied, Annalee tore through the center of the barracks finding the soft-spots of the now frenzied Covenant units with her combat knife. Though within moments most of the room was dead or dying, she knew she couldn’t reach the last group at the far end of the barracks before they fired back at her. Things were moments from going haywire.

As she unslung the carbine from her back, having settled on killing as many Covenant as possible before they killed her, the suppressed burp of an SMG sheared through a Jackal who had sighted Annalee with a beam rifle. Before the remaining Covenant troops at the other end of the barracks could reach or fire their weapons, two silhouettes pushed down from the ceiling, firing suppressed assault weapons into the remaining stragglers. Annalee couldn’t help but smirk as every last Jackal and Grunt hit the floor in a mist of purple and blue blood, unable to even screech in response to the sight of Spartans dropping from the vents above.

Annalee held up her knifed hand with an open palm, signalling her appreciation. The two Spartans nodded in turn. She wasn’t alone after all.

One of the Spartans quickly moved to the other door of the barracks and placed a small hacking device on a panel, killing the lights and locking the only other door into the hut. At the very least, if a curious Covenant unit decided to enter the broken door, the Spartans would be completely hidden in the shadows. And, with their night vision engaged, they would be able to drop the hammer on them before the bastards knew they were in danger.

On a second look, Annalee knew exactly who her comrades were. The one who had gone to the panel was none other than her squadmate Andrew-B191, “Drew”, their field engineer. The one who approached her was Spencer-B337, “Spike”, the Commander of November Team. Annalee gave a quick, friendly salute to Spike. He reached out and clasped her shoulder as he made his way to the broken door at the other end of the barracks. That was all that needed to be said on the matter of command. Spike was now running the show.

“It’s good to see you, 220.” Spike reassured Annalee.

“Likewise, sir.” she responded rasply, surprised at the sound of her own voice. She realized she hadn’t spoken in about a week. “Sir,” she gingerly asked after him, nursing her vocal cords “…are there any more of us?”

“If there are, we haven’t been in contact with anyone… toss me your rangefinder.”

Annalee demagnetized the rangefinder and tossed it to Spike, who began to scout the exterior of the barracks through the broken door. She felt an elbow nudge her arm, and turned to Drew who came to join her. He deplorized his visor and smiled at her, appearing phosphorescent green in her HUD’s night vision setting. Annalee noticed that his oft clean-shaven face was now covered in stubble; his constant smile still there. He glanced curiously at her carbine. “Planning on alerting the camp, Golf 2?” he quizzingly nodded at her weapon.

“Only because I knew you would be around to deal with it, Golf 4.”

“Roger that.” Drew smirked.

Annalee appreciated his attempts to lighten the situation, but their rendezvous had made it apparent that the remaining squadmates of Golf Team indeed hadn’t made it. Mary and Wei were dead. She turned from Drew, choosing to keep her visor polarized. She didn’t want him to see how broken she suddenly felt.

She had assumed all Spartan squads had been wiped out, and that she was alone. But, she still had held onto the hope that maybe...just maybe the last of her squad had made it—that any Spartan had made. Before she had tossed it to Spike, Annalee had been using Mary’s rangefinder that entire week. After coming across it at an overrun Spartan position, she had snagged it. There were too many bodies, and she couldn’t see if one of them was Mary before she had to keep moving. But, she had hoped. She hoped she would be able to give it back to her, and that Mary would laugh. She had hoped she would be able to toss Wei his busted assault rifle she had found in the rubble of a Covenant bunker, and he’d silently nod in approval. She hoped they would all tell their stories of how they were separated, and how they eventually found each other. She hoped they would all laugh about it, and cry about it together. She hoped they could have all made it, so they could support each other, especially since Joel and Ahmed were killed almost immediately once the mission went south. But, all that remained now was Drew, and her. Her heart ached for her team—it was like losing her family again.

Now, in hindsight she felt silly for thinking she would ever see them again. She knew they were probably dead. It wasn’t professional to hope like that; it wasn’t Spartan-like. After the hell they had been through—the hell that she had been through—she should have known better.

As if she needed the stress, her veins pumped with white-hot rage, her augmented brain keeping her ready for a battle. She clenched her teeth as her emotions fought to undo her training, and frenzy her into a blood rage. In particular, she found that the “untouchable” mantra of “Spartans never die...” mocked her incessantly. Tell that to Joel, Ahmed, Wei, and Mary, she begrudgingly thought. She couldn’t stand to hear that lie anymore, and her brain made her remember it on repeat—it forced her to remember...to make her angry. A side effect of being a Spartan it seemed.

For all she did to hide her rage from her comrades, Drew knowingly handed her a magazine for her pistol. She looked back at that dumb smile of his. He was hurting too. They all dealt with the rage in different ways. Each internal battle was different, and Drew always seemed to find a way to get out in front of it. It may have seemed to be entirely for his squadmates sake, but helping them in turn helped him. Annalee took the clip, and nodded silently.

“I know you’ll make ‘em count, Annalee—”

Both Spartans ducked instinctively as another loud roar shook the barracks. Spike waved the duo over to the door as the dust again settled inside.

Taking a position behind Spike, they peered back out into the camp. Another Phantom had just arrived. It pulled hard to its side, slowed and came to a hover near the main structure of the Citadel relay. A blue light opened on the bulbous craft’s belly, and a squad of Covenant rode a gravity lift down into the camp. Spike, took his visor off Mary’s rangefinder and turned to Annalee and Drew.

“It’s all Elites” he grunted, “I counted ten—Spec-Ops class. Looks like the fuzz is here.”

“I’ll spare you the details,” Drew noted to Annalee “but, this is the third group of Elites we’ve come across the last two days.”

Annalee, hung her head.

“They know we’re here?” She asked.

“I was able to piggyback the local network, and caught a signal from the BattleNet…” Drew hesitated.

“...There’s a Covenant Corvette in geosynchronous orbit over the Citadel. They called for an expeditionary unit to reinforce the local guard… they’re worried they didn’t find us all, but they don’t know for sure.” He glanced out the door to the Citadel as another Phantom flew overhead, stirring awake even more dozing Grunts, and riling up the Jackal sentries. He shook his head, “—probably means ONI finally found something worthwhile…”

“That means” Spike interrupted, “we’ve gotta’ get this taken care of now. This isn’t a ‘soft’ target anymore, and it sure as hell isn’t getting any softer. Lock and load, Spartans: we’re gonna’ infiltrate that Citadel and complete the mission...get some well deserved payback, too. Understood?”

Annalee and Drew’s HUD updated their squad info, highlighting each other. They winked notifications to Spike’s HUD in acknowledgement. He pinged them back, completing their connection.

It was time to go to work.