Halo: Building Bridges, Burning Boats

The status light winked green. Go.

Two coughs, two bodies. Slumping against the dark green shipping containers, trailing blood down the sides were two dock workers in blue coveralls now stained red. Holding the literal smoking gun was Dan-A010, clad in SPI armor and wielding an M6C SOCOM.

Patting Dan on the shoulder another SPI clad soldier moved into the narrow pathway created by the containers of the port. M7S raised, Hastings-B206 kept his eyes up, one on the motion tracker, and one on his surroundings, carefully tucking the bodies away inside a container.

Winking his status light green, Hastings kept the submachinegun raised as he held his position. Moving quickly past him were five other armored figures, a sixth trailed behind, slowing to look at the slumped over workers. Lowering the weapon and moving to the SPARTAN caught in thought.

Reassuringly he patted the other teenage soldier on the shoulder. The fellow boy-soldier looked back at Hastings and nodded in silence, moving after the others with Hastings following suit.

Cody was a fish out of water on this op. While B206, and the rest of FEUDAL’s Beta Company operators (all but two were) had only fought insurrectionists, B042 had been doing what they’d all volunteered to do, fighting the Covenant. This made Cody both an object of jealousy and a deadweight in most of FEUDAL’s eyes. Hastings had befriended Cody on Onyx during their training, and that left him B042’s only friend on the team for now. Though he knew the others would come around once they saw Cody work.

The team moved through the maze of shipping containers, the seven of them covering every angle as they worked their way out. Halting the group with a raised fist, Dan peeked his head around the corner. If Hastings’ map of the area was correct as always, they were about to cross the open area between the shipping containers and the central building of the port.

With a quick series of hand gestures, Dan had the SPARTANs activate the SPI’s phot-reactive panels, granting the group invisibility with the sub-par active camouflage replacement. As the group faded into invisibility, Hastings’ HUD put six bright blue arrows over the now invisible heads of his teammates their SPARTAN tags above the arrows. A group of workers rounded the corner in their powder blue coveralls, the SPARTANs were utterly silent, and utterly still.

Hastings’ hands tightened around the grips of his weapon, and even though he couldn’t see it, he practically felt the rest of the team tense as one of the passing workers halted and looked dead at the group, taking a drag from his cheap cigarette before shuffling on with the rest of the workers. Just like that the workers were gone, off to do their daily duties, and inside the sound proof confines of the Semi-Powered Infiltration Armor every operator let out a sigh of relief.

Then Dan moved, his camo distorting as he moved ever so slightly, the movement so subtle only trained eyes would catch it. Though B206’s HUD would’ve caught it even if his enhanced vision hadn’t. Seeing that it was clear, Dan broke into a sprint. After him went Tanya, then Eric, then Abigail, then Tomas, Cody, then him. Rounding the corner of the corner of the container Hastings darted after the others.

Racing over pocked and cratered concrete, it was only now the younger members of FEUDAL saw just what kind of destruction Alpha Company had wrought back in 2537.

As the world around them rushed past, Hastings saw it littered with burnt out vehicles still unmoved, and crashed aircraft who’s now barren hulls jutted up like bones, long since stripped of anything of use by salvagers. The city in the distance looked like a backdrop to a post-apocalyptic film, the skyscrapers that had not fallen had chunks of the exterior missing, and some spouting smoke and flame.

Such destruction, all brought about by kids like them, though in Dan and Tanya’s case, it had been exactly them. It was no wonder when the distinctive flicker of the photo-reactive panels fighting to match its wearer’s rapidly changing environment came into view of the building’s door guard, they ran. Vaulting over sandbags and sprinting as fast as they could, the insurrection soldiers ran for their lives. But they weren’t fast enough.

Whipping his submachinegun with one hand, B206 squeezed the trigger, two runners jerking violently as bullets cut through their light body armor. The quick coughs of other suppressed firearms dropped the others who ran. The one who stood his ground couldn’t have been any older than thirteen, younger than even him. Hastings flinched, but someone else didn’t. From in front of him a weapon flashed, an MA5K Carbine, Cody. The boy jerked wildly as 5.56 millimeter rounds barreled into his chest, then stumbled back against the entryway, blood trailing behind him as he slid down to the ground. Cody had just taken his first human life. Apparently B042 left his morals at the door when one had a weapon pointed at him, which wasn’t an entirely bad thing.

B206 had little time to ponder as B401, Abigail, slid out of formation as she dropped to a knee. Her camo distorted wildly with each of the three shots from her suppressed M392, which were followed by the stifled cries of the guards stationed of the roof tumbling forward off the roof as they clutched the entry wounds on their throats. They landed with a soft ‘crunch’ on the concrete, necks breaking as they impacted head first after falling from the third floor.

They were steps from the door, Don and Tanya hurled themselves to the right of the entryway, Tomas and Eric peeled off to the left, but he and Cody kept moving, their camo deactivating as the picked up speed. Reaching to his back, Hasting whipped out another submachinegun from his back with his left hand, and with a similar movement Cody exchanged his carbine for a shotgun.

Lowering his shoulder, Cody made contact with the door, instantly the lock broke and the door caved in towards the point of impact, flying from its hinges the door flew down the length of the entrance hall. A series of surprised curses filled the air as the two breached, shifting their weapons to face the rebels sitting around a large table in the lobby. With their camo gone, the innies were well aware what the drab armored reapers were.

As one reached for his pistol, Cody kicked off the slaughter. His shotgun coughed harshly and the potential shooter was flung from his chair by a burst of buckshot. In the instant it took Cody to pump the weapon, Hastings had brought up both weapons and fired, insurrectionists seemingly dancing to the rhythm of the projectiles’ impacts. Then the shotgun blasted again and again, the two soldiers firing until their weapons ran dry, the white brick wall was painted with splashes of crimson, and the room was filled with the corpses of dead rebels slumped over the table.

The ammo indicator for Hastings’ right M7 flashed red across the upper right of his HUD, notifying the SIII it was out. There was no indicator for his second weapon, the SPI’s less advanced electronics systems and HUD couldn’t process both weapons at once so it was up to B206. But he’d kept count, and he knew he was out.

Sliding the left submachinegun back onto his back, Hastings went about reloading his primary M7, winking his status light green to it was all clear. As Cody slid more shells into his shotgun, the remainder of FEUDAL moved past him and Hastings, Abigail snapping up her weapon and firing once. At the end of the hall a girl was clutching her throat as it bleed, the MA3B she’d been holding clattered to the ground as she dropped to her knees. A second cough sounded from Tomas-B400’s M6 and the girl dropped, Abigail’s twin had always been one for mercy.

Moving down the hall, Hastings could clearly see the girl was but another child soldier, a bit older than the other one. B206 wanted to curse the rebels for their cowardice in using children, but he knew he had to take into account what he was; a fifteen year old boy. Yes he’d from age six to twelve to be one of the deadliest warfighters in human history, then been augmented to super-human levels, and had three years of special operations experience under his belt, but he was still fifteen. Nothing pained him more than when he was reminded that the URF and UEG didn’t differ all too much in terms of their methods.

Ready and reloaded Hastings kicked in the door to one of the offices branching off the hall, freezing as a loud “Shit!” echoed down the hall. All eyes in FEUDAL turned to the end of the hall, where standing over the pool of blood from the girl stood one man. Clad in an old set of CMA garb, and hefting an HMG-38, this one man stood in position to compromise the entire operation. If he went to shoot the sound could cause more alarms to be rung, if he ran the alarm then they were screwed still. The team was good, but all of the surrounding area would jump at the chance to kill UNSC military.

Eyes narrowing in anger the man moved towards the alarm, bringing back his hand to punch the button. “Fuck me…” Hastings whispered sharply, forcing his eyes shot as he prepared for the blare of the alarm. But it never came. Opening his eyes, Hastings looked across the hall to Abigail, but instead of seeing her standing with M392 raised, she was frozen mid breach, looking back down the hall towards the entrance. Looking back down the hall, his eyes, and the rest of the team’s eyes settled on B042.

Left arm outstretched, Cody held his M6 in hand, and one spent casing on the ground below it. Lowering the weapon and attaching it back to the magnetic plate on his thigh, all eyes shifted back to the rebel who dropped to his knees, blood trickling from the hole in his forehead, then fell face first to the floor. Looking back again to B042, the SPARTAN slid one final shell into the suppressed shotgun and pumping the M90.

Pointing out at all the team and questioningly flashing a thumbs up, Cody silently enquired if they were all okay. Taking a brief moment of pause A010 looked around at the team, then back to Cody, returning the gesture, and dragging two fingers across his visor, flashing the infamous ‘Spartan Smile’.

In that instant something changed, Hastings could tell. It wasn’t a complete process by any means, but the process of Cody being accepted into FEUDAL had at least begun, and that was a start. Flashing another series of hand signals, Dan ordered the team to get moving, they still had targets to kill.