- John I276
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- Exalted Member
All who rise up before me shall fall, and those who do not,
will wish they had.
John I276
"Raised in blood, trained in fire, and hardened by battle; we are Spartans. And in defending humanity, we find our purpose." -Spartan Mantra (My Spartan Mantra)
Halo: Birth of the SPARTAN IV
Prologue
A friend returns
“Shipmaster! I have a human beacon on my radar.” Major Domo K’lacknr Spentis was concerned. He had spent three months on several small ground skirmishes towards the end of the war with the Jiralhanae, piloting Phantoms and Spirits into battle. But on Ravaging Soul, a CCS-class Battlecruiser, he had never seen anything human-oriented other than a translation book and several weapons that his new Shipmaster found enjoyable. “Well,” Shipmaster Slk’jw N’brais asked, “What are they saying?”
“All it says is S O S.” K’lacknr still had some trouble speaking human. “I cannot make any sense of it.”
“Ha,” Shipmaster called out, “My friend, if you are to be my Communications Officer, then I suggest you know human abbreviations and sayings. S O S is a beacon used by humans as a short form of a distress signal.” He chuckled once more then turned to the Navigation console. “Set a course to the signal, K’lacknr will give you the coordinates.”
“Yes Shipmaster!” What a little suck up, Spentis thought, Why do they all do that when they leave the school? Shrugging, he turned and went back to work.
Forward Unto Dawn was in bad shape, and Cortana knew it. After John went into cryosleep, she began work on her data console, working endlessly to divert all power left to John’s tube, the SOS, and her control panel. This had surprisingly taken her three months to do. They really were on their last reserves. They had enough power left to last a few months; seven months, seventeen days, thirteen hours, and six minutes to be exact. She could only hope that they would be found. A few minutes later, just as she was about to shut down from her avatar mode, she spotted an Elite ship about 1000 kilometers out. She didn’t receive any communications from the cruiser, it made sense because they had no way to receive anything, that part of the COM system had malfunctioned. She watched intently as the ship crept closer, 900 meters, 600, 100 meters, until finally, at around 75 meters away, a Phantom and a few Banshees flew out of a bay on the port side of the ship.
“Sir, we are reaching the source of the beacon.” A Minor Domo said.
“Good,” K’lacknr responded, “send out the Vacuum Troops.” He watched as without hesitation, his orderly went to work prepping the troops and warning them that the humans aboard the shipwreck may not know of the new alliance or even be alive. They all jumped out of the ship and moved around the Banshees trained on the opening in the ship. “Hey!” Cortana yelled out on all the COM channels she could access, “Over here!” One of the commandos turned and saw her and the cryotube. When he reached her, he said in almost fluent English, “I am Minor Domo Fjdad Smnrk of the HSNC Alliance; we have come to rescue you.”
“The HSNC Alliance, what is that?” Cortana replied, baffled by the new faction.
“My Major will give you all the information that you request.” As he turned to look at the cryotube, his face turned into what Cortana guessed to be the Sangheili equivalent of shock and joy. “The Demon! I’ve found the Demon!”
The Demon? Oh that was a nickname the Covenant gave John during the war. “Let, me wake him.” Cortana said to the Minor, “Oh, and don’t call him demon, it is somewhat demoralizing to him.”
“O-of course oracle. Your wish shall be done. What should I call him?”
“His name is of no importance to you, so you shall call him Spartan.”
“Spartan…” the Minor toyed with the word for a few seconds before agreeing. She began the waking process. “Master Chief,” Cortana said, “wake up… we’ve been found.”
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