October 23, 2552
Orbit over Planet Onyx (Zeta Doradus IV System)
Leonidas-151 POV
The moment our captured Covenant cruiser exited slipspace, alarms shrieked across every UNSC vessel in orbit of Onyx.
Dozens of ships turned weapons toward us, their AI-controlled targeting matrices cycling red.
"Leonidas, our IFF isn't broadcasting," Kelly barked from the bridge console, already working to override the alien systems.
"We've got friendlies prepping to shoot us out of the sky," Fred added. "Standing by with countermeasures."
"IFF online in five," Shane reported.
"Make it three."
The air aboard the cruiser was thick with tension, like standing on the edge of a blade. I stood at the helm, watching the tactical display show dozens of UNSC defense ships arrayed around Onyx—vessels stationed here as part of the planet's secret role as Spartan Command. Orbital defense satellites blinked to life, MAC coils charging.
Then—ping.
A friendly beacon blipped green across the display. Then another. And another. One by one, the defense fleet recognized us.
"This is Commander Leonidas of the Spartan Branch aboard a captured Covenant vessel. Do not fire. Repeat, do not fire. Spartan presence onboard. We are returning to Camp Curahee."
There was a long pause.
Then a voice from the UNSC Cormorant replied, "Acknowledged, Spartan Command. Welcome home, sir."
Cheers erupted behind me. Kelly sighed. "Nice to not get atomized for once."
But the moment of relief didn't last.
An alert flashed red on the lower-right of the tactical readout—slipspace ruptures—a dozen, then two dozen, then a full ring of them opening up around the far side of the Onyx system.
"New contacts," Shane said, voice tight. "Covenant fleet entering the system."
I scanned the readout—two CAS-class carriers, five CCS-class cruisers, dozens of destroyers. We were about to have a full-scale war on our hands.
"They must've picked up the SOS from the slipspace beacon Kurt sent," Fred muttered.
"Or followed our wake," I said.
But that wasn't what made my stomach turn.
Another alert pulsed across the display.
An old one.
A red box with a designation I hadn't seen since the last time we lost trainees in Zone 67.
DRONE SIGNALS DETECTED - CLASS: UNKNOWN - ORIGIN: ONYX CORE
More and more of them began blinking on the screen—tiny, fast, agile signals crawling up from the planet's surface into orbit, swarming out of the Forerunner structures hidden beneath Onyx's crust.
"AI command stations reporting autonomous drone fleet coming online," Shane said, reading from the incoming data stream.
The defense fleet's captains were already hailing me in a panic.
"They're crawling up from the planet, sir!"
"The defense fleet. They're activating MAC!"
"Do we engage? Are they hostile?!"
"No," I said, already opening the wide-band command channel to every vessel in orbit. "This is Commander Leonidas of Spartan Command. All hands: abandon ship. I repeat, all UNSC personnel are to initiate Emergency Protocol Nightfall and evacuate to Camp Curahee or the planetary surface immediately."
"Sir, what the hell—?"
"They are here to fight us and the covenant," I said. "And the defense fleet is sandwiched between the two. A killzone."
On cue, the first swarm of Forerunner drones—sleek, insectile shapes the size of Longswords—sliced through the void toward the two fleets in the system. Blue tracer beams and arcs of energy danced like lightning storms, coordinated AI firepower overwhelming the lead destroyers before they even finished deploying their escort squadrons.
Covenant vessels scattered, scrambling into evasive formations. UNSC vessels buckled under the drone onslaught.
The drones simply tore them apart.
I watched the ship feeds switch one by one to autonomous control, AI crews now fully in charge as human crews raced to evacuate in escape pods and drop ships.
The cruiser—our cruiser—broke through the last of Onyx's upper atmosphere and dove into the clouds, the base beacon of Camp Curahee locked in.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of UNSC personnel were already being dropped to the surface.
ODST pods. Pelicans. Cargo birds retrofitted for personnel. Crashing. Flaring. Landing in trails of smoke and fire.
Camp Curahee's skies were a storm of reentry heat and roaring thrusters.
But not everyone made it.
Some ships were too slow to evacuate. One of the older frigates took a direct hit from a Covenant plasma torpedo and split in half. The Forerunner drones didn't protect the humans—they ignored us, but they didn't shield us either.
Losses were mounting.
By the time our cruiser grounded—landing like a stone in the outer fields of Camp Curahee—we could hear the sirens from the medbays, the endless shouting on comms, the cries of wounded being pulled from burning wreckage.
Kelly and I disembarked first, flanked by Sam and Shane. The survivors all turned as we approached—the battered remnants of Army, Navy, ODSTs, and fellow Spartans who'd made it off the ships before they burned.
A Marine captain stood up and saluted. "Sir. We got hit hard, but Camp Curahee is still operational."
"Start triage. Spartan medics assist the wounded," I said. "I want every surviving ship crew accounted for and logged. We hold the line here."
I turned to Shane, who was still watching the burning sky.
"Tell the Spartan IIIs and Spartan IIs to muster at the command bunker. I want eyes on everyone. No more ghosts. And get the trainees from HOTEL COMAPANY under ground."
He nodded and ran off.
Above us, the orbital battle was a thing of horror and beauty.
The Covenant had brought an invasion.
The planet had brought an execution.
And we were caught in the middle.
But for the first time, maybe we weren't the most dangerous thing on the battlefield.
The war table flickered under the red emergency lighting, its holographic topography of Onyx's surface shimmering as more red blips—destroyed vessels, confirmed Covenant dropships, and evacuation points—appeared with every passing second.
Outside the command bunker, Camp Curahee was a hive of chaos. Medics screamed orders over the roar of incoming Pelicans. Wounded Marines were being hauled in on makeshift stretchers—some of them still smoldering from Covenant plasma burns. Automated turrets barked at targets in the upper atmosphere, but none of us believed they'd hold the line.
A plasma lance had carved across the distant mountains not ten minutes ago.
The next one would hit us.
"We're not going to hold this position," I said, stating the obvious.
Across the table stood Dr. Halsey, arms folded tightly, jaw locked with cold resolve.
Beside her, Chief Petty Officer Mendez nodded grimly.
Commander Kurt-051 stood at the corner, still wearing scorched armor from earlier skirmishes. His helmet sat on the table. The deep circles under his eyes said it all—300 Spartan-IIIs, most of them barely out of augmentation, and nowhere left to run.
"The Covenant are pushing in from orbit, land, and air," Kurt said. "Our auto-turrets will slow them, but the fleet's gone. The orbital defenses are nonresponsive, likely destroyed or captured. We're a few hours from glassing."
"If we're still here when their main assault begins, we'll lose everything," Mendez said. "Everyone."
I looked down at the topographical map and tapped a section highlighted in gray—Zone 67. A jungle basin ringed by cliffs, carved out of the terrain like a bullet hole in the planet. The Forerunner structure buried beneath it still made the AI go fuzzy.
The map refused to resolve the terrain fully, as if it were always shifting.
"We hide," I said.
Halsey turned to me.
"Zone 67," I continued. "The Covenant won't bomb what they think is sacred. They'll glass the base, the landing zones, the roads, but they won't touch the ruins."
"And the drones?" Kurt asked. "Last time we were down there, they tried to turn us into Swiss cheese."
"We don't go in blind," I said. "We take Titan AI recon probes. Keep our Spartans in staggered formations, layered defense. Drones tend to respond to aggression first. If we keep our people tight and our signals low—"
"It's still a risk," Halsey said, voice tight. "A damned stupid one."
"It's the only one left."
A silent moment passed. Mendez rubbed his face and leaned over the table.
"If we evacuate into the jungle, we lose communication with the upper orbit."
"We've already lost orbit," Kurt muttered. "Only thing left up there are burning hulls and falling debris."
"I've studied that structure before," Halsey said quietly, pulling a datapad from her coat. "What you saw… the pods, the drones, the forerunner systems—it was incomplete. Defensive. If the Covenant knew how to activate it, they already would've."
I watched her thumb through the pages, stop on a schematic.
"There's something deeper," she said. "We saw hints of it when the cadets went missing—whatever that first drone facility was, it was just a gate. A prelude. If we get in deep enough…"
She trailed off.
"You think we'll find a shelter," I said.
She looked up and met my eyes.
"I think we'll find a fortress."
I nodded.
"Then we move everyone. Spartans take point. Alpha and Bravo Company protect the main evac lines. Gamma Company runs recon ahead of the convoy."
"I'll prep the Spartans," Kurt said.
"I'll coordinate the ODSTs and Marine holdouts," Mendez added.
"And I'll get my research kits ready," Halsey muttered, half to herself.
The room was already clearing before I spoke again.
"Let's move. We have three hours to get five thousand people underground."
We stepped out of the command bunker and into hell.
The sky burned. Covenant dropships slashed through the clouds in coordinated formation. Their escort Banshees screamed overhead. AA fire streaked upward from the remaining turrets—doomed but still fighting.
I keyed into the wide-band Spartan channel.
"This is Commander Leonidas to all active Spartan units: Operation Exodus is go. I repeat: all units mobilize. We are abandoning Camp Curahee and relocating to Grid Reference Zulu-Seven-Six. Spartan IIIs are on escort detail. Spartan IIs form up on me. Priority is protecting the scientists, engineers, and wounded. No one gets left behind."
A chorus of affirmatives filled my helmet. One by one, the blue IFF tags on my HUD moved into formation.
Then, like some ragtag exodus from hell, we marched.
Thousands of boots thundered over metal decking and concrete. Pelicans shuttled overhead, dropping supplies and flares at the jungle treeline to light the way. Soldiers carried wounded on stretchers and crates full of medkits and rations.
And above us, the sky cracked again—another lance of plasma slicing through a ridge a few kilometers east.
Camp Curahee wouldn't last the hour.
But we would.
Zone 67 was waiting.
____________________
The jungle swallowed us whole.
Thick underbrush clawed at my armor as we advanced, vines draping from trees so massive they choked the sky. A constant mist clung to the air—part humidity, part ash, stirred up from the plasma bombardment we'd narrowly escaped at Camp Curahee. Behind us, the horizon still glowed red, a funeral pyre for everything we couldn't carry.
I led the column from the front, HUD syncing in real-time with every unit behind me. Blue triangles for Spartans. Green for ODSTs. Yellow for surviving UNSC personnel. A staggering mass of humanity, over five thousand strong, pushing through the rainforest like blood through a clogged artery.
We hadn't gone half a kilometer before the jungle fought back.
Not nature—machines.
A low-frequency pulse thrummed in my helmet. My Titan AI, BT-7274, pinged it immediately.
"Forerunner signal spike detected. Unknown movement patterns. Fifty meters. Bearing: ten o'clock."
"Contact!" I barked.
The line snapped into a staggered defensive formation, Spartans raising rifles in a fluid, rehearsed motion. The whirring sound followed a moment later—like turbines spinning underwater, rising in pitch.
Then they came.
Three alien drones emerged from the brush in a blur of motion. They floated above the ground, elegant in their design—spherical main bodies flanked by telescoping limbs and central "eyes" glowing molten orange. They moved with no heat signature, no radio chatter—just precision and hostility.
They didn't ask questions. They opened fire.
Twin lances of searing yellow energy arced through the air, slamming into the front ranks. A Marine's screams cut off mid-breath as the beam carved a molten line through his chestplate. Return fire from Spartan-III Dante and Jane tore through the underbrush—standard-issue BR55 bursts and armor-piercing rounds pinging off the drone armor with frustrating inefficiency.
"Hit them with plasma!" I ordered. "Spartans, drone loadout!"
We'd learned the hard way that plasma incinerated the drone's surface shielding better than ballistic rounds. The call echoed across channels. Moments later, a volley of plasma bolts—scavenged Jackal pistols and Elite rifles—streaked toward the drones.
Two exploded mid-air in a spectacular burst of white flame.
The third spiraled upward, dodging effortlessly before unleashing another cutting beam. A Scorpion tank, driven by a pair of ODSTs, fired a shell upward—the explosion flattened a ten-meter patch of forest canopy.
Drone Three slammed into a tree and died with a shriek of static and flame.
"Clear!" shouted Shane-A112 over the channel, his helmet cam showing two dead drones at his boots and one ODST giving a shaky thumbs-up.
"Keep moving!" I ordered. "Double-time. We're too exposed here."
The convoy lurched forward again.
The trek lasted hours.
Each kilometer brought a new threat—more drones, collapsing footpaths, vine-wrapped ruins half-sunken into the terrain. At one point, we stumbled across an old ONI field tent from the first Onyx expeditions in 2524. Overgrown, its walls scorched with plasma burns. A reminder that ONI always knew more about this place than they let on.
BT-7274: "Detecting latent radiation pockets ahead. Recommendation: Detour 0.3 kilometers west. Anomalous metallic deposits suggest drone nesting zone."
We rerouted twice. Lost three more Marines to ambushes. At one point, a Sentinel-class drone we hadn't seen before—a massive version with four rotating arms and a glowing shielded core—descended from the treetops like a goddamn thunderbolt. Fred-104 and William-043 had to tag-team it with synchronized grenade throws and a plasma sword looted off a dead Zealot during our last encounter on Reach.
The sword tore through the drone's core like paper. It crashed, burning, into the jungle floor.
By the fifth hour of marching, the soldiers were moving on muscle memory.
The jungle thinned as we neared the edge of Grid Zulu-Seven-Six—Zone 67 proper.
An unnatural stillness overtook the air. The birds stopped calling. The insects ceased their chittering. The trees parted as if pried open by unseen hands.
And then we saw it.
The same clearing from all those years ago. The same Forerunner spire rising from the earth like a blade stabbed into the planet's heart. This time, it wasn't alone.
Dozens of Forerunner constructs—towers, pylons, floating glyphs—had risen since our last visit. Glowing blue conduits pulsed along the stone, like veins on a living body. The air shimmered.
Halsey emerged from the column behind me, stepping to the front.
"My God," she whispered. "It's waking up."
I didn't respond. I just raised my rifle.
"All personnel, establish a perimeter. All Spartan units, defensive formations. Mendez, get the scientists and wounded under cover. This is our Alamo now."
Kurt's voice crackled through the comms.
"Or it's our doorway to something bigger."
I looked up at the monolith rising before us, its peak lost in the stormclouds overhead.
"Either way, we hold it."
______________________
We held the line for twelve hours.
Twelve hours of fighting tooth and nail, each inch of ground drenched in plasma scorch marks and broken stone. Covenant forces came at us in waves—Elites, Jackals, Grunts, and more Brutes than I'd ever seen in one place. Some bore regalia I hadn't encountered before—mohawk crests, bloodstained armor, wielding massive gravity hammers that dented MJOLNIR plate like it was tin.
But then, as abruptly as it began… it stopped.
Maybe they'd finally bled enough for one day. Maybe the drones were thinning their numbers in the jungle behind us. Whatever the reason, the Covenant lines broke and retreated—back up to the surface.
We didn't chase them. We couldn't. Not with what we'd found below.
The Forerunner city beneath Zone 67 made everything on the surface look like a strip mall compared to New Alexandria. Buildings—if you could call them that—rose like angular shards of obsidian and silver, layered with etchings that pulsed with faint cerulean light. Walkways bent in ways that ignored gravity. Holographic bridges appeared where there were no supports. And in the center of it all was a massive rotunda-like plaza, domed by what looked like semi-translucent alloy that changed hue with the ambient light.
Even Halsey was speechless when we entered it.
We made camp there. Our wounded were stabilized, ODSTs and remaining Marines forming a perimeter while Gamma Company Spartans fanned out to scout the nearby ruins. We had breathing room, for the first time in days. I took it.
And I used it.
The stasis pods from Camp Curahee sat at the edge of the plaza, perfectly intact.
Team X-Ray: five Beta Company Spartans whose biosigns had registered stable since the evacuation. For nearly two years, I'd tried to crack these things open, with no luck. Not even Halsey had the answer. The pods were Forerunner in design—retrieved by me before we ever realized what Zone 67 really was. The stasis chambers had no ports, no circuits, no seams. Just a pulsing blue glow and a faint hum that made your fillings vibrate if you stood too close.
But now I knew better.
As I stared at one of the broken drones nearby, its core cracked open and leaking filament threads of what I could only describe as photon weave, it clicked.
The same material was layered across the pods. The drones used excited-state photon compression, folding light into solid matter to manipulate the effect of light speed. A pseudo time barrier. My mind raced. If the Forerunners could weaponize light, they could also stabilize it—build structures, seal containers, create chambers where time didn't matter.
I didn't need to cut the pods open.
I needed to phase-shift them.
BT-7274 offered suggestions. Not calculations—intuition, based on what we'd learned through observation and drone disassembly. I tuned my armor's internal EM field with precision, reducing interference. I took a breath, placed my gauntlet against the pod marked X-Ray – B135, and rerouted my MJOLNIR's auxiliary power to feed a phased current through the connection.
A jolt surged up my arm.
The pod shimmered.
And then… hissed.
The photon layer peeled back like liquid silk, dissolving into the air as the chamber opened for the first time in over two years.
James-B486 gasped and sat upright, eyes wide, sweat glistening on his forehead. His skin was pale, but not sickly. No signs of emaciation. Time hadn't passed for him. Not really.
"Welcome back," I said, voice steady as I scanned his vitals through the HUD.
One by one, I did the same to the others. Caleb, Drake, Johannas, and Christine. All five. Team X-Ray was alive.
Their faces told the rest. No memory of time lost. Just confusion… and awe at the Forerunner city around them.
But I couldn't bask in the moment. Not yet.
Drone wreckage lay in a nearby alcove, its main eye shattered by a sniper round from Fred hours earlier. I brought Halsey the shards, the exposed conduits, and the power core.
She didn't speak for a full two minutes, running scans and muttering lines of equations. Finally, she looked at me with the kind of glint in her eye I hadn't seen since the early days of the Spartan-II augmentations.
"Do you understand what this means, Leonidas?" she said, voice barely above a whisper.
"You tell me."
"They didn't just harness photonic resonance… they learned how to warp physical properties with it. Using frequency alterations alone—nothing mechanical. These drones… these pods… this entire city… It's all one integrated system. It's alive, in a sense."
I nodded. "BT agrees. I think I'm starting to see it."
She gave a faint, humorless chuckle. "Of course you are. You're a Spartan… but you're more than that now. You've always had a way of seeing things others don't."
There was something in her tone. Pride… and maybe regret.
Then she handed me a datapad.
"I found something else," she said.
"What is it?"
"A map. Not of Onyx. Of what's underneath Onyx."
The datapad displayed schematics. An enormous lattice. Endless caverns. Gates. Machines. One word flashed at the center of it all, marked in Forerunner script and translated through the AI systems embedded in our armor.
"Shield World."
My breath caught.
Shield World.
A fortress, built not just to hide something—but to preserve it. Protect it.
Behind me, the stasis pod remnants shimmered as if reacting to the datapad's pulse.
Whatever was coming next… we weren't done.
Not by a long shot.
Halsey stood before the central holopillar like she was witnessing the birth of a god.
Pulsing columns of radiant blue and orange light encircled the wide chamber we now occupied, each one illuminating a fragment of a system far beyond anything humanity had ever dreamed of. Intricate glyphs spiraled and rotated in the air, some in languages I couldn't comprehend, others beginning to be translated in real-time by Halsey's rapidly adapting linguistic subroutines.
I stood at her side, helmet tucked under my arm, still reeling from what we'd just learned. The lull in the Covenant assault had given us a precious reprieve, and for the first time in days, the planet wasn't actively trying to kill us.
That wasn't a good sign—it meant something worse was coming.
But for now, we listened.
Halsey turned to face the assembled command staff—Mendez, Kurt, myself, a few other Spartan-II fireteam leaders, and several scientists still coherent enough to stand. She looked like she hadn't slept in a week, but her voice carried the strength of certainty. She didn't need to raise it; when Halsey spoke, you listened.
"You're all familiar with the concept of a Dyson Sphere," she began. "A megastructure capable of harvesting the total energy output of a star. It's long been a theoretical marvel—an impossible feat for any known civilization."
She gestured to the pulsing hologram.
"This is that concept taken to its logical end. What we are standing on is not a planet. Not truly. It is an exterior shell, terraformed to appear habitable. Beneath it lies the true purpose: a micro Dyson Sphere encased in a Slipspace bubble."
A few of the scientists gasped.
"A Slipspace bubble?" one asked. "What—like an internal universe?"
"Exactly," Halsey confirmed. "In normal space, it's no larger than a transport pod. A few meters in diameter at most. But within that bubble? A fully-contained, planet-sized installation. Controlled environment. Internal star. Artificial gravity. Time and space operate at different speeds depending on the layer."
Kurt crossed his arms, nodding slowly. "A sanctuary."
"A shield," Halsey corrected. "They called it The Sharpened Shield. It was a bomb shelter. The Forerunners built these structures to survive the firing of their Halo Array."
I stepped forward, brows furrowing. "How many of these things exist?"
Halsey shook her head. "Unknown. At least a dozen were referenced in the fragmented archives we've accessed so far. Requiem was one of them—a militarized variant. This one… this one is a sanctuary and an archive. A last bastion, designed not just to preserve life, but to preserve knowledge."
She turned back to the central holopillar and pointed toward a glowing symbol—a spoked circle centered around a hexagonal aperture.
"The Core Room Antechamber," she said. "At the geometric center of the installation. That's the entry point into the Slipspace sphere. We get there… we gain access to the inner Dyson Sphere. Assuming it's intact."
I ran a hand down my faceplate, trying to process the scale.
"All this time," I muttered. "We thought this planet was the anomaly. Turns out the anomaly was the Forerunners hiding an entire world beneath our feet."
Kurt glanced toward the hallway where the last remnants of our evacuation force rested. "We've got thousands of civilians, wounded, and raw recruits behind us. And if the Covenant regroup and launch another push, we won't survive another fallback. We're out of space."
I nodded. "Then we don't make a stand here. We don't wait. We go deeper."
Halsey tapped the holopillar again. "I've identified a path. A series of transit nodes that should take us within ten kilometers of the Core Room. It's not far—but the path is through the deepest strata of this facility. It was never meant to be accessed by outsiders. Expect defenses."
I looked to Mendez, then to Kurt. Both gave short nods.
"Then we move," I said. "Prep all Spartan units. Load out for subterranean, low-light, close-quarters engagements. ODSTs will cover the flanks. Drone strikes are likely. Covenant stragglers are a certainty."
I stepped toward the command console and linked into the Spartan command net.
"This is Commander Leonidas. Effective immediately, the entirety of Spartan forces on Onyx will converge and push toward the Core Room Antechamber. We move within the hour. Full evac status. Bring everything and everyone. This planet… this shield world… may be our only hope."
As the message relayed, I turned back to the artifact chamber one last time.
The Forerunners had built this place to survive extinction.
Now we had to do the same.
__________________________
The tunnel into the deep core of Onyx was unlike anything we had traversed thus far. A massive circular shaft descended beneath the subterranean Forerunner city, lit only by the hum of hexagonal panels running along the inner wall. We rappelled down using magclamps and jump kits, the entire Spartan force and remaining UNSC combat personnel fanning out in squads, covering every angle. ODSTs, Marines, and surviving airmen carried what gear they could. Above us, the last sliver of daylight faded behind closing doors of alien metal.
This was our final descent. Our last fallback.
Zone 67's drones pursued with cold precision, flanking even when it seemed impossible. The Covenant, equally rabid, clawed and blasted their way through corridors and collapsed tunnels above. Two enemies who would never work together—now converging on a common target. Us.
The trek wasn't a single drop. It spiraled in stages, punctuated by narrow bridges of hard light and grav lifts of alien origin. At each new level, we faced more pressure.
"Contact, six o'clock!" Shane barked from behind. His titan AI lit up our HUDs—heat signatures, nine of them. Drones. We turned as one.
Fred and William leapt to the wall—wall-running to flank while the rest of Blue Team laid down suppressive fire. A Covenant lance caught up at the next turn—brutes and elites pouring down a grav shaft above and getting immediately cut off as our drone pursuers opened fire on their flank. We didn't even stop to question why. The chaos of three-way violence was the only reason we were still alive.
"Spartan element, move!" I shouted.
We sprinted forward again, leapfrogging defensive positions and pushing deeper. Cortana's voice flickered over encrypted comms—routed through the Ascendant Justice, now in low orbit behind the remaining Onyx fleet.
"You're two kilometers from the core. I'm projecting at least three more enemy formations en route—no way to predict who reaches you first."
Kelly cleared a path ahead with a charged plasma rifle—one she'd ripped off a brute she elbowed into a chasm ten minutes ago. Jane and Dante from Wolf Pack took point. They weren't the same teens I'd watched years ago at Curahee. They were Spartans now—fast, brutal, and precise.
We had to collapse another tunnel behind us. The walls were lined with Forerunner conduits and markings none of us could translate—but every structural point lit up in infrared when Shane's AI tagged stress points. A few thermite charges and the upper passage crumbled, sealing in another wave of drones and at least a dozen Sangheili.
"Heads up!" yelled Fred.
Another hard-light bridge—this one flickering. The controls were on the far side. No time.
John didn't hesitate—he activated his jump kit and leapt. The moment he landed, his weight triggered the platform and the bridge locked into place. We sprinted across, boots slamming over transparent glowing material, the void yawning below.
"This is it!" Kurt's voice came through the team channel. "The last mile! Core chamber's up ahead!"
We burst into a wider corridor. The walls pulsed with golden circuitry. The entire structure trembled—whether from bombardment above or Forerunner systems booting up, I couldn't say. But I felt it. Something massive was waking.
Linda lagged slightly—her shield strength still weaker since the flash clone organ replacement. She was still lethal with a sniper rifle, but even she knew better than to engage in melee with brutes in her condition. I waved her forward.
"Hold nothing back," I told her. "Once we reach the core, there is no retreat."
And then we saw it.
A massive seal—a doorway framed by concentric rings, each spinning slowly and locking into place with seismic groans. The drone formations had stopped pursuing, as if unwilling to breach this final sanctum. The Covenant, however, showed no such restraint.
From the rear, plasma fire painted the tunnel with blue and green fury. ODSTs and Marines set up a defensive line with what little cover there was.
"We hold this line long enough to get everyone through," I said to the command group. "No one gets left behind."
Kurt nodded. "Curahee. We stand alone."
I looked to John. He said nothing—but gave a small nod. We'd held too many lines. Lost too many. This wasn't just another holdout. This was it.
As the seal groaned open and the inner light of the core spilled out in a radiant glow like sunrise in a long-forgotten world, we filed in. The last hope of humanity on Onyx—4,600 remaining souls—began to descend into the one place neither drone nor alien dared tread.
And we would make our final stand there if we had to.
The world narrowed to iron sights and muzzle flash.
The Core was a cathedral of alien grandeur—sleek metal, glowing veins of Forerunner script running up and down the walls like luminous vines, the air humming with power far older than any species here. At the center, a swirling vortex of pale blue light slowly pulsed from the floor. It wasn't just a portal. It was the exit. Our last and only hope.
Above and behind us, the remaining 4,600 personnel—Marines, Army, ODSTs, engineers, medical staff, the rest—were rushing through the Forerunner gateway. One by one. Squad by squad. Thousands had already made it through.
We just had to hold.
I was on point with Will, Shane, and Fred. The rest of Blue Team was spread thin, holding the different flanks while the drone swarms and Covenant slammed into the chokepoints like a tidal wave of hate. Hunters. Brutes. Even a few Elites—zealots painted in ceremonial blood. All of them pouring in through the tunnels carved by war and desperation.
And we were running out of time.
I jammed a fresh plasma cartridge into a Type-25 Spiker I'd ripped from a Brute earlier. The smell of scorched flesh and burning coolant stung my nostrils. My Mjolnir's energy shield pulsed low and failed as a barrage of crystal shards from a Needler grazed my left side.
"Status?" I barked over the comms, ducking behind a fallen slab of alien alloy.
"Three-hundred left!" Halsey's voice crackled in my ear. "We're nearly there."
"Copy." I slammed another mag into my rifle and kept moving. "Blue Team, hold your ground. Don't give them a centimeter."
We surged forward again, laying down heavy suppressive fire. Drones screeched from the cavern ceiling like metal vultures, clawing through the dark. Grunts died in bursts of methane and flame. A brute jumped the distance of a warthog and nearly crushed Shane—until Jane put a full clip from her BR into its skull.
And then the Hunters came.
Two of them, charging down the hallway like armored trains, fuel rod cannons glowing emerald. The hallway was wide—by human standards—but not wide enough to maneuver much. The Forerunners built for geometry and elegance, not for cover.
They fired.
The first blast sailed wide. The second didn't.
Will turned to fire back—he always had a death wish when it counted—but he wasn't fast enough. I saw the charging glow, saw the flicker of movement, and made the call before my mind had a chance to scream no.
I threw myself into him with every ounce of force my suit could deliver.
I felt the plasma round impact before the pain. The world went white. Then red. Then gone.
Heat. My right side erupted into agony. My HUD glitched. The warning systems in my armor flared as plasma and flame tore through synthetic muscle, titanium composite, and flesh beneath.
I hit the floor hard—hard enough that I bounced. I tried to scream, but there was no air in my lungs.
Everything blurred.
Through the static on my visor, I saw Will scrambling back toward me, dragging me with his good arm while firing his sidearm with the other.
"Leonidas! Leonidas, hang on—!"
Fred's voice came through the comms, sharp and panicked. "MEDIC! We need a damn medic—!"
"No." I croaked.
I looked down.
My right arm was gone from the shoulder. My leg from the knee down was... not there. Just a mangled, molten mess.
"No time. Finish the evac. We hold."
Will shouted something. Shane cursed. Jane was silent—focused and exact, gunning down whatever came near. Good girl.
I pushed the override on my suit's pain inhibitors. Morphine pumps overridden. Needed clarity now more than comfort.
My left arm still worked. I grabbed my VK78, jammed the barrel against the ground, and forced myself upright on one knee.
Blood loss was setting in. I could feel it. A coldness spreading out from the heat. The shaking was starting. The HUD was dimmer now, but still there.
But the mission wasn't over.
We had people to save.
"Move, Spartans!" I shouted. My voice cracked, but they obeyed. They always did.
I laid down suppressive fire as the last of the civilians and support staff cleared the portal. Shane came back for me again, but I waved him off.
"Not yet," I muttered. "Not done yet."
Then I saw it.
A brute chieftain—massive, easily three meters tall—charged through the hallway, flanked by two sword-wielding zealots. Headed straight for the core.
"Go," I told Will. "Seal it. Get them through. NOW."
"No," Will growled. "Not without you."
"That's an order." My voice had steel in it now. The kind that cuts.
Will looked at me.
Then nodded.
He turned and vanished into the light.
Behind me, the core chamber's glow began to fluctuate. Ten seconds. Maybe less.
I turned toward the brute and loaded my last magazine.
Time to die on my feet.
The descent to the core had taken everything we had left.
Every clip. Every grenade. Every ounce of strength. And now, the portal shimmered above me—like the eye of a god, wide open and judging. Around us, the final battle between flesh, alloy, and faith had reached its crescendo.
Behind me, the last of the UNSC personnel were through—4,600 souls, alive because we held this line. Because we made a promise to humanity. Because Spartans never die. Not really.
My vision blurred, pain a background radiation to the numbness crawling through my body. My VK78 barked out its last few rounds. No ping. No chamber. Just a dull click. Dry.
The ground was scorched glass and glowing dust, every inch a graveyard for friend and foe. Fred was gone. William—gone. Linda and Kelly, I think they made it. I told them to go. Shane, Dante, and Jane were through the portal. X-ray team, alive. Every second I bought them, every second the enemy spent focusing on me, meant more of us got through. That was all I ever needed.
I stared up at the crystalline ceiling of this impossible place—the heart of a god-machine built to endure time itself.
And then it arrived.
The Elite, clad in radiant gold, its ornate armor catching the flicker of plasma and the burning light of the shattered core. It strode toward me slowly, like I wasn't even a threat anymore. I guess I wasn't.
I dropped the VK78. Let it clatter beside me.
"Is this all your kind has to offer?" the Elite snarled in crisp, venom-laced English. Its mandibles curled in something between a sneer and a smirk. "You bleed. You burn. And still, you lose."
I pulled off my helmet, fingers slick with blood and heat. The air hit my skin like fire. But I met his eyes—those hateful, pupil-less pools of alien pride.
I smiled.
And I said, "That's the thing about humans. We don't need to win… we just need to make sure you lose too."
His expression shifted. Too late.
My thumb was already pressing the manual detonation switch—wired into the final act left to me. The Shiva-class nuclear warhead's failsafe was burned into my HUD even before I opened the case Kurt left behind.
He always had a backup plan.
There was a nanosecond of light—so brilliant it seared my soul. A pulse that washed over bone and armor and spirit alike. In that fraction of a moment, every pain I had ever felt was eclipsed by a blaze so white it had no color. So silent it roared.
And in the next nanosecond… nothing.
No pain. No sound. No fear.
Just peace.
___________________
LEONIDAS-151
KIA (MIA) – FOR OFFICIAL PURPOSES
SPARTAN BRANCH - CLASSIFIED
He gave everything.
And in the dark, where the machines of gods slumber, the name Leonidas echoed once more—this time, not as a man... but as a legacy.