Been reading a ton of Light Novels recently, came across Eighty-Six, and got absorbed enough right after volume 1 that I had to write a little something on it. At the same time, was playing the Halo Reach campaign again, read the Fall of Reach novel once more, and felt inspired enough to ask about the similarities between Spartan-IIIs and the Processors of Eighty-Six, and how a Spartan on his own might react if placed into this world of mechas without any support save for some weapons and the MJOLNIR armour.

Not the most familiar with Halo lore outside of the games before 2010 and novels that came before 2008 or so, but hopefully it's accurate enough.

Contrary to what most who had read his heavily redacted military file may think, Spartan-B312 didn't think of himself as that much different from his peers. At the end of the day, even if he may have spent his days playing the role of a personal grim reaper for his superiors at ONI while 298 fine men and women of Beta Company sacrificed themselves to earn a pyrrhic victory on Pegasi Delta, Spartans were Spartans.

Spartan life was simple. They served as humanity's sword and shield, and so long as there was a threat to the peace of humanity and her colonies, they would give every damned thing they had to eradicate the threat. It didn't matter if said threat was insurrectionist ideals or the war against the Covenant.

So long as there was a mission, they would achieve victory.

No matter the cost.

From the time he became a Spartan-III, life had been simple. One by one, he had seen the people he fought and bled with drag humanity's enemies down to hell with them, beginning with the 298 of Beta Company that perished for the sake of Operation:TORPEDO to delay the Covenant's push into UNSC space, until the very end at Reach, as one by one the members of his newest – and only – team sacrificed their lives without hesitation for the sake of all humanity.

Yes, Spartan life was simple. Fight, and win. Mission after mission. And at the very end, the only acceptable death was one that laid the foundation to the path of victory. A Spartan fought until their dying breath.

B312 was no special Spartan.

His final mission: survive. If survival was impossible: kill as many Covenant as he could.

Spartans saw their missions to the end. Anything less than victory was unacceptable.

And so it was, that after hours of brutal combat against hordes of Grunts, Elites, Brutes, Jackals, Drones, and even a couple of Engineers, Spartan-B312 knew that the end was coming. He smiled wryly, as he laid down another controlled burst of 7.62x51mm bullets from his MA37 Assault Rifle, ending the life of yet another Elite.

A bloody trail of bodies, ammunition, and plasma burns followed his offensive retreat into the shipyard bunker where he had completed his final mission. The torch of all Noble Team was passed on to Captain Keyes and his crew on the Pillar of Autumn. All that was left was to take as many Covenant bastards down with him to hell.

Without pausing for even a second as the Elite fell, he tossed a frag grenade into the doorway, buying space for him to reload the assault rifle as he backed into the final room he could safely retreat to in the shipyard. He spared a moment to take stock of what inventory he had left on him after hours of fighting and salvaging from the corpses of friend and foe alike.

He was down to two clips of AP rounds for the MA37. He still had a fair few clips left for the SRS99-AM sniper rifle, but there simply wasn't enough space to effectively use it. He had a M45-T shotgun, but with no ammo left after prolonged use in close combat. Beyond that, all he had on him were a pair of plasma pistols he had continuously kept refreshed from the hundreds of Grunts that had fallen over the past hours of engagement, and a Gravity Hammer he had looted from a Brute.

He considered his options, cycling through the scenarios rapidly while the Covenant were still taking cover from his thrown grenade. All he could do now was to engage in a firefight as long as he could, keep his distance with pulses of the Gravity Hammer when they came too close, before ultimately taking as many of them down with him as he could in a final melee up close.

Another controlled burst of fire. Reload. Sprays of plasma that melted the heads of a pair of unfortunate grunts, and back to the MA37. Then –

An incredible wave of heat, coupled with a spike of electromagnetic radiation detected by the MJOLNIR Mark 5 –

Glassing.

The Covenant were finishing up here. He smiled mirthlessly. It seemed like they were finally taking out the big guns. How fortunate of him to be able to join every single Covenant still remaining on Reach in hell.

At the same time, however –

"Slipspace rupture detected."

That chime had been ringing for hours now, mere minutes apart at first, before decreasing in frequency. The Covenant fleet high above Reach were in dogged pursuit of the Pillar of Autumn, but Spartan-B312 hoped that his operation of the MAC cannons had bought Keyes the time he needed. A couple Covenant ships had been recalling their ground forces hours ago, but a few well-placed snipes at that time had reduced their numbers, and acted as bait for them to follow him.

Spartans fought to the end.

Sensors spiked instants before he felt the heat on his skin, and then –

-o-o-o-

He didn't know how much time had passed. To him, it had felt like mere instants since his last stand against the Covenant, but the inbuilt date/time display on his HUD was stubbornly malfunctioning.

That, however, didn't matter. He found himself in an unfamiliar environment, and he reacted as he had been trained to do.

Spartan-B312 had been deployed on a colourful assortment of missions before. Infiltration, assassination, search and destroy, demolitions – whether against Covenant or Insurgent forces, he had done them all. After all that, there wasn't much that could faze him.

Even if he hadn't, Spartan-IIIs and their predecessors were a disciplined bunch: training under Mendez, it had been drilled into them all never to be taken by surprise. Panic was a soldier's worst enemy. As part of Spartan-III training, there had been times when they'd been transported elsewhere on Onyx while kept unconscious, with their sole task being to navigate their way back to Camp Currahee.

Come to think of it, there had been that one exercise where they had been sent off-planet too. That had been interesting.

He had no idea how he got where he was. Whether some bizarre hitherto unheard of phenomenon caused by an interaction between the immense radiation given off during the Covenant's glassing of Reach and distortion of slipspace as their remaining crafts pursued the Pillar of Autumn, or an even more unlikely idea of rebirth or reincarnation, Spartan-B312 didn't know how it was he went from Reach to his present location.

It didn't matter.

Beneath his helmet, he quirked a humourless smile. Spartans never die.

The how that had transported him to where he was now was irrelevant at present. His body ached from hours of combat, but that too was irrelevant.

If he was alive, his top priority was to return to the fight; simple. For that, he needed to make contact with UNSC, and secure transport off-planet.

Mission set. Plan?

He found himself in the middle of the ruins of some city – urban-looking, fairly small in size, with the tallest buildings only a couple storeys at the most. There were signs of fighting: spent ammunition, signs of explosive fire, collapsed buildings. Patterns not consistent with Covenant-fielded weaponry. Thermal signatures on his HUD were missing.

Humans did this damage, and evidently, the city he was now in was utterly abandoned.

An Outer Colony planet? He frowned, considering that thought. Most of them had been glassed by the Covenant before he'd even enrolled into the Spartan-III program, but one could have slipped through the cracks. Perhaps one with ties to insurrectionists?

He looked up into the sky, hoping to orientate his relative galactic position based on stars he could observe.

It was then that he saw the first signs of life in an otherwise dead-looking world. Trickles of movement, just barely visible to greatly-enhanced Spartan sight. Without giving a moment's pause, he switched to the optical zoom provided by his helmet.

Aircraft, miniscule in size. Approximately 10 centimetres. And at the magnification he currently was on, he could tell that there were a swarm of them, spread throughout the entirety of the skies as far as he could observe. With practiced ease, he switched over to a different imaging modality.

As I thought. Signal jammers.

Electromagnetic waves were being distorted, refracted, and otherwise rendered completely moot around them. He saw many different insurgent militia groups employ similar tactics to evade detection by the UNSC in the past, although never on this scale.

One thing was for sure: these drones were not UNSC creations. And if a militant group had the potential to create something like this, they were dangerous. It required investigation.

There was a slight snag, though.

He most definitely wasn't on Reach. In fact, he couldn't even begin to orientate his position in the galaxy. What stars he could observe in the night sky didn't match any constellations that he recognised, even after considering different points of reference across the Orion Arm.

That was mildly worrying, because with the types of missions he typically was employed in, that had been a skill he had required to pick up along the way. Extraction options weren't always the simplest in the far-end of contested space, especially when participating in off-the-book missions alone. There had been many times when he had to steal a ship after successful completion of his mission for return to UNSC space.

Luckily for him, his missions allowed for a certain degree of operational flexibility. At present, his mission was to return to the war against the Covenant. Failing that, a secondary mission until extraction was made possible would be to investigate this planet he currently found himself in, and to take appropriate action in alignment with UNSC interests.

For that, he would need to search for signs of civilisation. Unless the drones up in the sky were fully autonomous mechanical creatures of a long-dead colony, humans had to exist somewhere.

Objectives and plan. Next, then, was considering potential complications.

Attempting to broadcast on UNSC frequency was not viable, with jamming and possible interception of long-range communications. He needed to prepare himself for a mission of undetermined length. For that, two things were of paramount importance.

First, and the lesser of the two: sustenance. He was no stranger to starvation and thirst, but even Spartans succumbed if they had nothing to fuel their bodies with.

Secondly: weaponry, the bread and butter of Spartans. He was down to two clips of the MA37 Assault Rifle, and he was fully out of ammo for the M45-T shotgun. The Gravity Hammer he sadly never had the chance to make use of against the Covenant over the past hours had been low on charge from its previous owner. For tactical options, he was down to his last few grenades.

His remaining weapons were better off: he had a few clips of the 14.5x114mm high-velocity, armour-piercing rounds for his SRS99-AM Sniper Rifle, while his two plasma pistols were down to approximately three-quarters of charge in their energy cells.

And the most important piece of equipment he had on him: the MJOLNIR Mk V Powered Assault Armour. It was still in good shape despite all the combat it had seen on Reach and in his previous missions, although there were scratches, dents, and a few subtle burn marks from damage incurred when his shields were down. It would hold.

Thankfully, the ruins around him looked easy enough to scavenge to solve the above two problems. Whatever happened here, the fighting and destruction had been quick and brutal. Bodies long since decomposed littered the streets.

That exercise in orientating himself and coming up with a plan had taken only a couple seconds at most. Spartans learnt painfully well the value of haste and quick analysis.

Even though all the scanners on his HUD showed no signs of activity, he kept his MA37 trained in front of him, ready to fire at a moment's notice. Mendez had drilled on the importance of trusting one's own eyes, rather than the readouts of scanners that could be misled by dozens of different ways. The UNSC was rife with stories of soldiers who fell victim to such blind trust.

Quickly, he entered one of the buildings. What might have once been a sign had long since been blown to splinters. Still, it was easy enough to recognise the supermarket, from the shelves of items on display, even if most of them were now toppled over, and the products were of dubious value. Each step he took displaced layers of dust.

Untouched for a long time. No signs of looting. He smiled. Bingo. Barely a minute in this foreign environment, and he was getting plenty of useful information.

Whatever had caused this damage, it had been bad enough to deter any would-be looters. Whoever had won the fight had been uninterested in taking the spoils of victory. Dating back to the annals of ancient history to more recent records of UNSC military engagements, similar stories to his current situation were plentiful. Assuming there were survivors from whatever had transpired here, it was obvious enough where to find them: refugees fleeing from an aggressor tended to band together elsewhere as a collective resistance.

In simple terms: all he needed to do was follow the trail of bodies. Eventually, he would encounter civilisation. In the past, his missions had led him to travel across entire planets while hunting down his targets with fewer leads.

Next, then –

Carefully, he made his way through the store, keeping his steps light, his body nimble, ready to burst into a firefight without notice. His MJOLNIR Mk V armour was a dull grey-black, its exterior plain-looking despite the many modifications to its internal systems that had been performed over his many years of service in ONI's more unpleasant tasks against fellow humans and Covenant alike. The hulking armoured form blended with the shadows, a habit formed over the years, barely making a sound despite the combined hundreds of kilograms of mass that armour and Spartan held.

He had engaged night-vision by pure habit from the time he entered the building. One by one, he stepped through the rows of shelves, before finding the prize he was looking for.

Canned food. The expiry date was of nonsensical interpretation – over four hundred years ago, going by the standard UNSC military calendar. Some self-declared independent colonies and insurgencies liked to make up their own little calendar systems. Was this the case here? He had no idea.

Second clue: the location of production.

'Made in the Lands of the Giadian Empire.' The name was unfamiliar, but humanity hadn't seen Empires in any of its colonies for centuries now. That was troubling; finding his way back to the UNSC would be difficult.

Keeping his weapon held in one hand, he dug gauntleted fingers into the lid, easily crushing and deforming it. He inspected the contents. Excellent. That was food out of the equation. A quick glance to the side made water a non-concern too.

Next, weapons. Right now, he had enough to get by, but –

Suddenly, he detected multiple motion and sound signatures on his HUD. They were kilometres away, still: that could only mean that they had to be large, heavy, or otherwise noisy. They were moving fairly quickly, although not in a vector directed toward him.

Carefully, he activated the active camouflage module of his MJOLNIR armour, taking slow steps outside. Observation was the priority here. He leapt, tugging himself onto the roof of a building, keeping his body out of line of sight as he moved from vantage point to vantage point, his body blurring in and out of view.

It was then that he saw them.

Five bizarre, insectoid vehicles, moving toward the city with surprising speed and coordination for such cumbersome designs. They were moving at about a comfortable cruising speed of a Warthog, although it was likely they could move faster still in the thick of action. They were medium-sized vehicles, approximately seven to ten metres in length, and about two metres in height.

There were three variants he could see. The first, comprising three of the group of five, was the smallest and lightest, with thin metal armour on its chassis. Primary armaments looked to be a pair of stationary guns on either side of what would have been its 'head', although he couldn't easily discern the exact type of ammunition packed by them.

The second likewise had six legs, but with a pair of long, powerful-looking blades attached to its forelimbs. A massive armament was placed atop the core of its frame – rocket-launcher systems, probably, based on similarities to UNSC design.

The last, largest, and probably most dangerous of the lot, walked on eight limbs. It only had a single armament, the entirety of its firepower concentrated into that one aspect of its design. Larger than the size of the rest of its body, a long cannon was attached at the top, and wouldn't look out of place on an UNSC M808 Main Battle Tank, or Scorpion. Its armour was thicker than its peers: more than likely, it sacrificed speed as well, but its cannon meant serious business.

All three looked almost like someone had taken inspiration from the Covenant Scarab, scaled it down many times, then haphazardly placed UNSC-favoured cannons, chain-guns, and munitions on them, slapped themselves on the back for a job well done and called it a day.

More strikingly, however: like the tiny drones in the sky, there were no discernible humanoid thermal signatures from the vehicle. He could see the vehicle's fuel source and engine where it was hottest, but it seemed to be entirely unmanned.

Their formation was easily recognisable. Patrol force. One of the first variant took the vanguard, one more at each flank, keeping a distance between them of about a couple hundred metres. The second variant, potent at both close and medium range, was in the centre of the formation, ready to move to the frontlines at any time. The third lagged behind the others, the core of their group. In a way, it was similar to a patrol group comprising a Scorpion with Warthog escorts.

Cursory inspection done, he looked for weak points, drawing comparison from what he knew of vehicles of both UNSC and Covenant make. While each limb was made to be strong to support the mech's weight, the joints were weak – it had to be, in order to provide manoeuvrability of the unit. Armour plating was thin in certain areas, most notably for the second variant, considering the speed it moved, its size, and the depth its limbs dug into the dirt with each step.

Yes, he could take them down. There were dangers to it: a point-blank, direct shot from the massive mean-looking cannon would likely kill him, MJOLNIR armour or not. Still, he'd dealt with worse odds before.

Really, this was like facing three Ghosts, a Wraith, and a bizarre ground-based Banshee, with more vulnerabilities than the Covenant vehicles. A nightmare to common soldiers, everyday life for a Spartan.

He had two options here. One: stay hidden, and follow their trail later on, since there was no telling what sensor capabilities they had on hand; or two: begin an ambush, and attempt diplomacy once their numbers were sufficiently crippled.

There were pros and cons to both. The first would let him have more time to find his bearings and refine his plans, at the cost of possibly having to engage a more powerful force later. The second would allow a controlled testing of the unknown units with minimal risk to himself so long as he went about it smartly, as well as making contact with whoever was operating those unmanned vehicles, at the cost of revealing his position to his enemies.

Even diplomacy was risky. Without someone physically present in the vehicle, there was no real requirement for negotiations to be carried out. The remotely-operated crafts could continue battling against him, and if their intentions were proven to be hostile, he wouldn't be able to find a hostage to use against other enemies or to interrogate this unknown force about their capabilities.

Ah. There was a third possibility.

Snipe the light units down at their weak points, break their formation, and see how they react. From a distance, with the MJOLNIR active camouflage module enabled to kill all sound, radiation, and every other possible metric that may reveal his location, he could test his theories without having risk to himself.

After all, from his experiences with insurgent groups that got their hands on UNSC equipment, even a Scorpion was nothing to a trained Spartan on its lonesome, so long as there was time for preparation and planning. Take the other units out of the equation, and that powerful-looking heavy vehicle would be a negligible treat.

Right, then. He took a look around his position, as the patrol force travelled across vast, unkempt plains that looked untouched by humankind for a long time. He spied a suitable location from which he could begin engagement, taking into account their vector of travel and possible reactions. With practiced ease, he got in position, sniper rifle at the ready.

Time to get to work.

The heavy tank slowed its advance as they neared the city. The faster and more vulnerable scout units continued on ahead, splitting into three separate paths as they patrolled. Spartan-B312 looked down the rifle's sights carefully, and performed a quick estimation based on distance, wind speed, and his target's speed and vector of travel.

When the spider-like craft was at a bend in the road, six double-jointed limbs reorienting themselves to perform a turn, he pulled the trigger.

The high-velocity, armour-piercing round flew true, covering the distance of three kilometres in an instant. Metal bent and curved as the bullet impacted its form. He didn't blink even once, carefully watching with augmented vision and reflexes in the merest of instants as the projectile penetrated layers of metal with thoughtful consideration.

He had carefully positioned himself, and picked off the target that would be easiest to take out from his location. The line of fire had directly positioned where the armour looked the thinnest straight through to the core of the craft. With unyielding force, the bullet punctured through several feet of steel, aimed straight through to the power cell, and –

Spartan-B312 watched the fireworks explode, chunks of metal sent flying off in all directions – just as he'd planned.

Now, then. He reviewed what he had seen.

Too flimsy to be titanium. Weight inconsistent with aluminium. Steel?

Interesting. Another vulnerability he could exploit. Steel was heavy and fairly durable, but it couldn't compare to the thick armour plating of titanium-ceramic employed by the M808B Main Battle Tanks, or even to the mixture of titanium, carbon nanotubes and ballistic polycarbonates that formed the hull of the Warthog line of military vehicles.

He had to admit it, though. He was impressed by whoever had designed these vehicles. For something like that to be entirely made of steel, its mass had to be immense – somewhere in the range of ten to thirty metric tons. With its speed being nothing to scoff at, the energy cell and engine had to be packing a powerful punch.

Next in the plan was observation. This was no different from tactics he employed against unknown Covenant forces, or against insurgents. If he went into a mission blind, the first task was always to forcibly obtain information with his own hands. He studied the behaviour of the remaining crafts of the patrol group, remaining perfectly still, his body invisible both to the eyes and to any would-be scanners.

They were coordinated. The moment the explosion had occurred, all four of the remaining vehicles had changed their direction, moving in an interception pattern that funnelled in toward the destroyed wreckage. If these were the fire movements of marines in the field, he would be beyond impressed. It required an impressive level of coordination and a total lack of hesitation. Spartans could pull it off.

These tanks, however, weren't marines. They weren't even humans.

It was too coordinated. The manoeuvre was performed virtually flawlessly, with no time passing between destruction of the unit and response by each of the remaining vehicles. That left only one possibility.

A collective intelligence bound these five crafts together, controlling their movements. Reactions were too quick for a regular human, meaning that it had to be an enhanced individual who had went through treatments similar to those of Spartans controlling all five crafts at once, or…

Artificial Intelligence. AI.

It was by no means merely theoretical. While the UNSC relied on ship captains, with shipboard AI offering tactical support, there had previously been trials of commandeering ships autonomously through AI. The problem there was that dumb AIs were too inflexible – they were experts in one subject area, lacking consideration for things outside of where their programming dictated them. Such inflexibility was a vulnerability, and once studied, was easily exploitable.

The solution, then, was smart AIs. The problem there was that the risk of a smart AI going rogue was possibility greater than even the Covenant. The still-unsolved problem of rampancy compounded that, meaning that any fleet commanded by smart-AIs would eventually be rendered helpless in the best-case scenario, and single-handedly destroy all humanity in the worst.

What, then, was this case? AIs existed on a spectrum – even dumb AIs could range from mere lines of programming and directives, to ones that provided information based on access to multiple databases. He needed to know what was going on here.

The four crafts moved quickly, closing in as a web onto their downed comrade. The two heavy units kept a covering position near the wreckage. One scout scoured the streets for any sign of who had done the deed. The last scout unit was surveying the wreckage, using its forelegs with surprising grace and dexterity, tearing apart its comrade in a fascinating mimicry of a post-mortem. Pieces of metal were scavenged from the destroyed craft, before it finally left to join with the search efforts.

He lay there, perched on the rooftop, invisible to his prey. Should he engage? The scouts were separated, and he could still pick them off. The heavier tanks looked to have more significant firepower, but if he used their fellow units' destruction as bait, he could take them out one by one.

Considerations, considerations. He mulled over the thought, before he got an urgent sense of foreboding.

Spartan-B312 trusted his instincts. It had saved his life – and more importantly, led to mission completion – many times in the field. He held his breath, increasing power supply to the camouflage systems, looking for signs of danger.

His HUD flared to life. Blips and blips coalesced together; discrete at first, before forming a large smear on the coordinate-based radar system. They were far off in the distance, hundreds of kilometres away; triggering his sensors by their sheer size and mass as they moved.

The readings were almost unprecedented for a ground-based assault. Whatever this was, it wasn't a scouting party. Carefully, he looked in that direction.

Spartan-B312's lips thinned into a grim line.

Tanks. Dozens of them; hundreds, thousands. More than had been fielded on the recent battles on Reach, and certainly more than what any insurgency he had previously suppressed had been capable of producing or stealing. They could lead a full-on assault. Worse, he doubted this was the entirety of their force: no one would deploy something like that for the destruction of a mere one unit of a scouting party if they didn't have spare reserves.

Seems like he found his fight after all.

And there were still no signs of human operators or foot-soldiers. It was a remotely-operated army, one that might be capable of meeting a full UNSC marine battlegroup on even terms on a land assault – possibly winning, even. If, as he postulated, it was controlled by an AI, the potential threat was far too great to be left unchecked.

There weren't just the three variants of vehicles either. He spotted more types – six, seven of them, accompanied by aerial fighter units that probably covered the anti-aircraft role.

It was unthinkable for a non-UNSC force to have power like this. The relative importance of his secondary objective was now on par with the primary. If such a force was hostile to UNSC, they had to be eliminated, and all details of their capabilities and manufacturing processes made known to the UNSC.

Strange, though. He saw no signs of ships or even satellite in orbit. With production capabilities like that, why wouldn't they defend themselves from a potential orbital bombardment?

Still, Spartan or not – with his present munitions, he couldn't take them out alone.

For now, at least, he corrected mentally. Give a Spartan enough time, and no problem was unsurmountable.

He preferred to end his missions as quickly and efficiently as he could, but the sheer potential threat a force like this could pose deserved a thorough execution. He crept away from the rooftop, searching for a more secure location before the larger force arrived. For now, his objectives were survival, scavenging together some additional weapons, and searching for civilisation while evading autonomously-controlled forces.

Under his helmet, he grinned.

Seemed like he was in this for the long haul without any field support. Just like old times.

-o-o-o-

For 25 days, he had trudged along in this landscape of destruction, scavenging whatever he could along the way. He didn't engage any more patrol groups despite having spotted them many times over – there was no sense in tipping his hand, since the benefit of taking them out would be marginal at best. He had moved from ruined city to ruined city, an endless trail of destruction he now knew the cause of, gathering what information he could.

Every scrap of information he found printed on scavenged goods was valuable. If his interpretation was right, based on the most common location of manufacturing, he had moved from the outskirts of the lands of the 'Giadian Empire' to an area that once belonged to the 'Republic of San Magnolia'. The density of enemy forces had changed, too – from where he had initially ended up in, frequency and numbers of enemy contact had decreased at first, before picking up over the last few days as he travelled hundreds of kilometres from where he had originally been.

Now, enemy patrols were even more frequent than they had been before, accompanied by slightly larger mobile assault groups. Skirmishing forces.

That could only mean one thing. He had been closer to the heart of enemy operations initially, before treading in the outskirts of enemy-owned ground. If patrols were now increasing, and skirmishing units were being deployed, that had to mean that there was an active battlefront nearby.

He was on the right track. This had to be the direction that the retreating forces had gone in as their unmanned enemies carved a bloody swathe through their towns and cities.

Weaponry was surprisingly sophisticated here. He didn't want to risk revealing his position by testing them out as he scavenged, but human civilisation here appeared to have taken ballistics to the extreme. He couldn't find explosives – whether that was because it was being hoarded by the military, or not used in the form of weaponry designed to be carried on foot, he didn't know.

The assault rifles he had seen in several buildings bore calibre of ammunition that seemed to be on par with armour-piercing rounds of his MA37. He hadn't seen sniper rifles around, but there was ammunition compatible with his SRS99-AM. The information printed on the rust-free metal promised death at a muzzle velocity exceeding 4000m/s, superior even than unmodified standard-issue unmodified UNSC rounds, and comparable with high-velocity rounds.

Sadly, he still couldn't find ammunition for his M45-T shotgun. There wasn't a big mystery as to why: against threats like these unmanned robots, no normal human could get in range to make effective use of shotgun shells.

He lay flat on top of a natural hill formation, granting him an overlook over his surroundings. He had abandoned the small town he'd been in overnight, looting what he could. Over the past days, ruined settlements had grown more common, with signs of recent engagements, a sign that perhaps civilisation was near. In the distance, multiple skirmishing groups of unmanned vehicles were mobilising, headed further in the direction Spartan-B312 had moved over the past month.

It could mean only one thing. An engagement was coming, and soon. He had to know who it was that was fighting these mechanical creatures, and whether or not they had the means of contacting the UNSC. If that was impossible, he had to weigh the situation, and make a judgment in alignment with UNSC interests.

ONI had always given him surprising flexibility in his mission choices.

He didn't have to wait long. Barely thirty minutes after he had settled into his sniper's perch, he saw signs of movement at the same time as sensors picked up heavy acoustics to the west of his current location.

At first glance, they looked to be no different from the types of crafts he had already seen. They were arachnid-like tanks that walked on four legs, armaments visible as attachments on each leg. A large mounted cannon almost like the tail of a scorpion poised to strike was mounted at the top. Like the unmanned scout and medium-sized vehicles he had seen, it was large but mobile, with a length of approximately ten metres and a height of two metres, sacrificing thick armour for ease of movement.

In short: it was a vehicle that provided no coverage from enemy fire save for evasiveness. A clean shot would easily destroy the entirety of that tank. It looked almost as though it was pieced together through reverse-engineering of the unmanned crafts, with the only thing showing signs of decent workmanship being the mounted cannon coming from its back to protrude out in front atop the vehicle.

More importantly, though: these vehicles were manned. The cockpits were fully opaque, and he couldn't see their pilots with his eyes, but the twelve or so spider-like vehicles had a human operator sitting in what passed as a cockpit at its 'head' through his thermal sensors. He looked down his sniper's scope to observe their movements more precisely.

They were veterans. He was impressed; they were forming up decently, taking advantageous positions before the enemy arrived. A portion of the force hid in the corners of ruined buildings, probably looking to catch their enemies in an ambush. Another portion was hiding off shadowed by hills, ready to engage in a pincer attack once the trap was sprung. One vehicle had gone to a nearby sniper's roost atop a hill – whatever armament it held, it could clearly engage enemies at a distance.

They were a coordinated bunch. Despite that, he couldn't discern their means of communication, since every frequency he attempted tuning into in every possible modality inbuilt into his MJOLNIR armour didn't yield any results. Another oddity.

He considered his options. If the situation called for his intervention, helping them out might place himself in good stead for assistance in contacting the UNSC. Otherwise, even if they proved hostile, eliminating the unknown threat first was always the better option.

With that, keeping himself shadowed from both forces, he edged closer to where the battle would probably begin. There would be multiple fronts, from what he could observe of the movements of the two groups – the ambush in the city, a skirmish off in the plains, a third group that was circling around a forest to strike at immobile high-value targets, a battle near the foot of the hills.

The battle began in earnest. Carefully, he crept slowly to bring himself nearer to the action, able to intervene if necessary. It meant abandoning his overlook position, but it seemed to be worth the trade-off. These forces were human, and thus easily understood. If they were friendly, great – he was sworn to defend Humanity to his dying breath. If they were hostile: they would be easier for him to eliminate than their enemies, since they were ultimately still human and vulnerable.

With that in mind, he observed the battle unfold.

They were good. They eliminated enemy heavy-fire support – a large, immobile heavy tank – in a flanking manoeuvre that kicked off the battle, using the forest as an intermediary cover from the more mobile craft but with weaker firepower. At the same time, as the enemy reacted by funnelling in toward their position, small ambush groups sprang out from the hills, decimating them and causing confusion in the ranks of unmanned crafts.

Whatever was controlling the unmanned crafts, it was not very sophisticated. It reacted by simple programming, and though they seemed to have a collective intelligence within their skirmish group, there was a lack of intuition that was now being abused by the human-piloted crafts.

Hell, if marines showed these kinds of tactics back on Reach, he'd gladly welcome them into his fireteam, Spartan or not.

The alpha strike a complete success, the human forces were reorganising themselves. Part of them entered the forest, hiding from bulkier enemies with their greater manoeuvrability. There, a secondary ambushed waited for their enemies, the separated scout units and light crafts being unable to receive support from medium tanks. The ambush in the city was fully executed, all enemies defeated without a single human casualty. The sniper he had seen previously was moving to another ridge higher up, crawling on its legs for a better vantage point. Flawless communication.

Beta Company had been trained with an emphasis on teamwork, unit cohesiveness, and tactics, after looking over the weaknesses showed by Alpha Company, the pioneer batch of Spartan-IIIs, that led to their decimation at Operation: PROMETHEUS, earning a pyrrhic victory that was the fate of all Spartan-IIIs. Spartan-B312 had been pulled out shortly after completion of his training, avoiding death alongside the rest of his peers he had fought and bled with for the better part of his childhood, but those lessons remained with him all the same.

The humans here weren't quite on the same level as he and his fellow Spartan-IIIs, but it was far beyond most marines and ODSTs he had seen on the field. They knew their enemies' weaknesses, and they gladly exploited them, continually providing cover for each other.

Despite that, this was still only the first groups of enemy skirmishers. More were still approaching, forcing them to reposition themselves.

It was then, into the first few minutes of the battle, that he noticed the first mistake shown by the human side. One pilot was heading off to the side, intending to provide cover fire for its peers out on the plains by flanking at a medium tank-unit. It would have been a brilliant tactic, if not for the terrain.

Marshland. It sprung out from the edge of the forest, and shadowed by the nearby hills, looked almost like grassland. He frowned, as one human-controlled vehicle edged closer to the marsh, time slowing down dramatically to his adrenaline-fuelled Spartan senses. Nearby, one of the unmanned heavy tanks with the Scorpion-like mounted cannon had been positioned there, now staying completely motionless as it waited in hiding. Only his previous observation of the battle and marking of units on his HUD, coupled with readings on his thermal scanners alerted him to its position.

Counter-ambush.

A trap. It seemed the enemy wasn't as unsophisticated as he'd thought.

Spartan-B312 considered his options. Engage. Observe. Which was better?

The front legs of the human-operated vehicle fell into the turbid marshland, stumbling ungracefully – and became stuck.

The enemy finally made its move, nearing closer to the entrapped human vehicle. At that distance, it couldn't fire its cannons, but it didn't need to. It raised its two front legs, its weight supported by the remaining six, intending to simply slice through the metal cockpit and pilot of its helpless prey by sheer force of mass alone.

For an instant, an image flashed in his mind's eye; Kat-B320, with her shields down, killed by a single spike from a needle rifle before any of them could react.

Adrenaline raged.

Time stood still…

…and Spartan-B312 acted.

-o-o-o-

Shin deftly piloted his Juggernaut, dancing between volleys of machine-gun fire from the enemy Ameise units, placing them between himself and the Löwe's heavy mounted 120mm turret several hundred metres away. Up close, he sprung high-frequency blades attached to his Juggernaut's limbs, slicing his way through the weakly-armoured scouts, crippling the Legion's support.

In his mind, he could hear everything his squadron was hearing, their senses connected by their Para-RAID devices as they were. It allowed for the transmission of all senses by tapping on some hidden aspect of the human mind, but out in the field, it was safer simply to share hearing for communication purposes. There was only so much information one person could process.

"Handler One to Undertaker, four units are approaching from your eleven o'clock."

He knew that, of course. Still, being able to 'hear' the voices of the Legion was something the Handler didn't need to know.

Undertaker was his Personal Name, granted to the ranks of the Eighty-Six who had fought in countless battles and emerged triumphant in the hell of war. He and the rest of his squadron were part of the rare few who survived in this metal coffin they called Juggernauts that would cave from a single clean hit by Legion tanks. Correspondingly, they were the only squadron consisting of Processors where the majority had Personal Names.

"Understood, Handler One. Laughing Fox, Black Dog, interception course."

"Got it," two voices answered in unison. On the screens of his cockpit, he saw them alter their course, taking up a flanking position that would allow them to open fire on them, with himself acting as bait.

He spared a moment to glance at the map displayed on one of his many screens. The battle was going smoothly so far. Zero casualties, and the initial Legion strike force was thoroughly crippled. Hopefully, the rest of the battle would go on that way. Gunslinger was still in sniping position, her higher terrain allowing her to evade fire from the Löwe units. And off to the side, Kirschblüte was moving to support Wehrwolf and Snow Witch.

All Personal Names, of course. Out in the field, they wouldn't use their own names.

Something gnawed at his senses, and he grew tense. They were what had let him survive for so long, fighting in the way that he did. He looked at his displays searchingly, idly evading a string of machine gun fire as he piloted his Juggernaut toward cover. Then –

"Get out of there, Kirschblüte!"

Handler One's panicked voice echoed in his mind. Time seemed to slow down, as his eyes snapped toward the display. The blip that corresponded with her unit had disappeared.

"Huh?" Kirschblüte's confused voice sounded for an instant, morphing into panic and realisation bare moments after. "What is this…? A marsh?!"

In his head, he heard the sound of a Legion unit closing in rapidly on Kirschblüte's position. A Löwe. It didn't have the high frequency blades or manoeuvrability of the Dragoon-type Grauwolfs, but it didn't need to. Immobilised as she was, Kirschblüte couldn't escape.

"I'm stuck!"

"Kirschblüte, get out of there now!" Shin shouted a desperate warning. His heart ran cold. The Löwe moved closer, slow compared to its peers, but speed was meaningless if his friend couldn't move.

"Oh…"

Her voice was filled with despair.

No, Shin pleaded. He turned his unit to face that direction, but he was too far away to see a thing, powerless to stop what would happen.

Over the Para-RAID, a deathly silence took hold, as all twelve remaining members of Spearhead Squadron alongside Handler One saw the inevitability that was to come.

"No…"

A faint, weak plea, more vulnerable than he had heard Kirschblüte – no, Kaie – say before. It was almost like a child on the verge of tears.

"I don't want to die…"

"KIRSCHBLÜTE!" Gunslinger screamed, her voice laced with mixed despair and desperation.

Then there was the sound of metal screeching, the roar of bullets, and a heavy impact.

An instant passed. Death didn't come. He was just as confused as Kaie.

"Kirschblüte?!"

"What…?!" Kaie's voice sounded confused, fearful, and yet stirring with hope.

To his senses, the Löwe's presence disappeared.

"What's going on, Kirschblüte?!"

His eyes snapped to the display. There was a third blip there, much smaller than Kaie's Juggernaut and the downed Löwe, almost invisible to their sensors. A level, firm voice echoed in the minds of all thirteen of them connected over the Para-RAID, sounding slightly distorted, but the words were loud and clear.

"This is UNSC Sierra-B312. What's your status, soldier?"