"Defiant Reclaimer, he who will shatter the land and break the sky apart..."
Halo 4:
My guess is that 117 will encounter more spartans to take on a greater threat... As ambigious as it is; there should be between 9 to 29* surviving spartans. The halo games seem to have phased in teamwork after H3 -ODST and Reach all had closer 'Squad' relations, just my personal oponion but for John to be reunited with fellow spartans could have a lot of benefits.
The link below shows a reasonable calculation of 9-26 spartans on Onyx, however does not take some members of Red Team such as Douglas 042 into account as they entered cryo.
*Evidence(Excluding Red Team)
-Sorry its a forum post.