Gray Team, chapter 1 Options

[Agent Griff]

I've studied all my options regarding a Halo story, and this seems the most unexplored and the most mysterious of all Halo stories. Even Eric Nylund, author of several Halo novels said that he considered the story of Gray Team a subject for a possible novel. Where I'm gonna be 1 step ahead of them and I'll try to express what I think happened to Gray Team. Most of this story will be fictional but I will add some things which are canon in the mix. I hope you enjoy this story.

~~~

The year was 2525. The UNSC frigate Commonwealth was in orbit over the planet Chi Ceti IV, in the fringes of UNSC space, more than 77 Light Years from Earth. The Commonwealth had just dropped all of the Spartan IIs which had survived the byo-augmentation process to test their new armour. This armour, dubbed the Mjolnir Mk IV by its creators, was a new type of special combat suit which was designed from the ground up especially for the Spartans, and especially for fighting the Covenant.

The MJOLNIR Mark IV was a radical redesign of the suit taking advantage of many technological leaps. This advanced battle suit was the first to fully integrate with the soldier's body. The suit plugged directly into the soldier's nervous system through a standard issue Neural Interface. The suit's many functions (communications, hydro-static gel levels, environmental systems, etc.) responded to commands issued by the soldier's thoughts.

This was also the first design to successfully utilize the reactive metal liquid crystal as a means of enhancing locomotion. It flawlessly enhanced the speed and power of the wearer, a sharp contrast to previous versions which required powered motors to allow the soldiers mobility. Because of this advancement, the design more closely resembled an actual suit of armor, as opposed to a powered exoskeleton. On one level the soldier moved the suit and in return the suit moved the soldier. This allowed for an incredibly compact design when compared to the previous incarnations.

The success of this version was also dependent upon the parallel development of the Spartan-II program, which produced soldiers with the physical prowess required to drive the system. Previous attempts to wear the prototype suit by unaugmented soldiers resulted in their deaths or severe injury due to the extreme reactivity of the system.

As soon as the Spartans equiped their new suits, they found it to perfectly suit them and their needs on the battlefield. The Spartans could now be assigned into military units and be sent to battle the Covenant. Before they would be officially sent into battle however, the Spartans were forced to undergo a baptism by fire when a Covenant frigate entered the system and engaged the Commonwealth. As soon as they could load up on weapons and ammo, all of the Spartans were ferried via Pelican dropships to the Commonwealth. It was going to need all the help it could get.

As soon as the Spartans boarded the ship they received tactical information regarding the situation of the battle, information on their enemies and their role in the battle which was going from bad to worse for the UNSC. There was only one option left for captain Wallace, commander of the Commonwealth: send the Spartans to board the enemy ship. Without a flinch, the Spartans did what they were told.

After being taken by a Pelican dropship to the very hull of the Covenant starship, the Spartans infiltrated the ship through a hole in the hull made by the Commonwealth's MAC gun. The MAC gun was an advanced weapon used by the UNSC, on par with Covenant Plasma torpedos. They were in short suply however when the war started and few ships had fully functional MAC guns. When they were fully functional however, they were a weapon to be feared by the Covenant. A well placed MAC gun shot could disable a Covenant ship by destroying its engines, or destroy it completely by destroying its fuel cells. Before the hull could be destroyed however, there was always the issue of Covenant shielding. All Covenant ships had shields, and the most resilient of shields could even resist a SHIVA Nuclear Missile. In this situation however, the shields of the Covenant ship were down, and both ships were exchanging body-blows between eachother. The Spartans would turn this situation however.

Only three Spartans, John-117, Kelly-087 and Sam-034 succesfully landed on the ship and entered through it's hole. They reached the ship's reactor, tossed their warheads inside, and escaped. Unfortunately, Sam got hit by plasma from a Jackal that breached his armor making it impossible for him to follow his friends out from the ship since he would die from decompression. He was forced to stay behind . He held off the Covenant while John and Kelly escaped. The warheads went off, and the Covenant ship was destroyed, taking Sam with it.

This battle was a victory for the UNSC, yet the Spartans had paid a price in this victory. One of their finest was killed by the Covenant on his first mission. He was the first of the Spartans to be deemed "Missing in Action" by the UNSC. It was part of a startegy to keep morale up by maintaining the myth that Spartans couldn't be killed. The reality however, was painfully different from what UNSC publicity made it appear to be.

After the battle, the testing facility on the planet's surface was abandoned in fear of a Covenant counter-attack. This attack featured only one ship, yet Covenant fleets often employed great numbers of ships, upwards of 30 capital ships with many more support ships.

The Spartan super-soldiers were divided into platoons, called teams, which were colour-coded. The team of Spartan John-117 was Blue Team. Out of all the Spartan teams, one stood out. Gray Team. Sent into a mysterious mission to a place held secret by the UNSC, being named only "too far away to be recalled", they were one of the last remaining Spartans by the end of the year 2552, when Earth was invaded. Many kept seeing them as possible reinforcements to join the battle to come. Yet many also questioned wheter they actually existed and if they weren't dead.

The task of Gray Team, when they set out from the UNSC HQ on Reach in 2551, was to try to focus Covenant ships and troops into a far away section of Human space, while keeping attention away from Reach and, ultimately, Earth. Hoping for a diversion, Gray Team was sent along with a task-force of 7 UNSC ships to the furthest reaches of UNSC space, even further than Chi Ceti IV. The planet which was their destination, Caleston, was a rocky planet, made up of several continents with wide surfaces of undrinkable liquid between them. This, coupled with the great heat of Caleston caused by the nearby star Fury 821, made the planet lightly inhabited. It wasn't one of the greatest places to set up but it was better than other planets nearby.

The task-force, dubbed task-force Atlas after the flagship of the battlegroup the carrier UNSC Atlas, stood in orbit over the planet as Pelican and Albatross dropships ferried troops and engineers over to the surface of the planet. The whole taskforce was commanded by captain Alexander Quinn, a promising UNSC naval commander who had seen action before in the battles of Paris IV and Jericho VII. This was first mission in command of an entire task-force and he was visibly nervous.

As he stood on the bridge of his flagship, the leader of Gray Team came up to him to talk about what his Spartans would have to do in this mission. Since he was thinking heavily, he barely noticed Spartan Randall-079 coming up behind him, even if Randall was in his Mjolnir Mk V armour specially given to him and his squad-mates for this asignment.

"Sir?" Randall quietly asked from behind captain Quinn.

"What...who...oh, Spartan-079. I wanted to speak to you. Good thing you received my message quickly." Quinn said in a slightly nervous voice. It was the second time he talked with a Spartan, and he knew about their famed skills in battle.

"You can call me Randall sir, I much prefer it when people call me by my name. Regarding a message, you never sent me one sir." Randall after a slight pause in which he tried to remember any message sent to him. Captain Quinn had only thought of a message, but since he was so stressed he didn't actually send one.

"Well, it's good you came anyway. I've been receiving preliminary reports from the planet's surface. It seems it's uninhabited. A barren wasteland...thankfully." Captain Quinn said, gathering his thoughts and trying to calm down. He felt a constant beat in his heart, a constant fear which always gnawed at him from the inside, too faint to really affect someone but too powerfull to dissapear. Quinn was feeling it fully.

"I have gathered my men sir, we are all suited-up and ready to go. What are our orders sir?" Randall asked. He was not impacient yet he did not appreciate staying away from the subject.

"Very well then...Randall. Go to the hangar bays and board Pelican dropship Alpha Kilo 17. It will take you to the surface of the planet, where it is no longer my jurisdiction to give you orders. General Blake will handle everything from there. I wish you luck on the surface Randall." Quinn said in a calm and collected voice. To an outside observer, only slight flickers of his voice would show how stressed he really was. Those that knew him closely however, could clearly see that he had changed since his promotion to captain. From the confident and outgoing commander he used to be, he was now a hollow shell of his former self, always seeming to fear something which was neither close but neither far.

"Yes sir. Good luck to you as well, I hope this all goes well for you." Randall said as he politely saluted his commanding officer. Randall wished the captain luck with a slightly ironic tone. He smiled slightly as the captain's face went pale. Randall always liked making these slight jokes on his colleagues. Little gags to personally amuse himself and ease off the stress of constantly being ready for battle.

As he left the bridge, he left the captain alone, staring blankly at the large viewport which showed the planet above which his ships orbited. His task-force was well-equiped as far as UNSC standards went. The oldest ship he had was his own flagship, the Atlas, which had served in the war since its very start, in 2525. The other 6 ships, the heavy Marathon-class cruiser Acheron, the 2 frigates Ebon Falcon and Surprise and the 3 destroyers Avenger, Achilles and Galahad were all relatively new ships, all equiped with modernized MAC guns, Archer misiles and Shiva Nuclear misiles.

The long trials and tribulations of Gray Team had just begun...
~~~
I hope you liked this first part of "Gray Team". Feedback and criticism is greatly appreciated.

This post has been edited by Agent Griff: May 11 2007, 07:12 PM

[Agent Griff]

I hope you like this part of Gray Team, it builds up the tension for the battle ahead. For those who want to read about a space battle, don't build up false hopes. This part mainly builds up the characters.
~~~
As Pelicans were racing to deliver all marines back to the ships, Fleet Master Kusovai was being given a report by the Ship Masters of one of the frigates which escaped the encounter with the humans. He was extremely upset by the fact that he had lost a heavy capital ship just because of the arrogance and religious fervour of one commander.

"So, basically, you retreated while he stood and fought on, because that's what he thought I and the Prophets would have liked him to do?" Kusovai asked in a slightly annoyed voice.

"Yes sir, that is what happened. He called us cowards as we retreated then, seconds later, his ship was destroyed by the humans." the Ship Master of the frigate said.

"Perhaps I should not have sent one so passionate about his beliefs, and so eager to prove himself in the eyes of the Prophets. How sad am I that we have lost a ship due to blind faith and over-confidence." Kusovai said, sadly.

"Are you trying to suggest that..." Field Master Voro said as he was cut short by Kusovai. Voro was trying to bring into discussion the fact that Kusovai wasn't terribly religious, as were his fellow Elites. He was a believer of the Covenant religion, yet he wasn't as zealous as others, believing in practical solutions to problems and relying only on one's personal skills, not on the "power" of the gods.

"No, I wasn't Voro. I never do. You know as good as I do that I would never doubt the supreme authority of the Prophets and of the Gods." Kusovai said, with a tone that somewhat mocked the Prophets.

"Do not take these matters lightly Kusovai. Perhaps out here, it does not matter as much, but back on High Charity, the influence and good-will of the Prophets it's everything. And they're giving more and more of it to the Brutes, and not to us. Acts like the ones previously mentioned could receive the admiration of the Prophets, hence increasing the influence of the Elites, and not of the Brutes, within the Council." Voro said with caution in his voice when referring to the Prophets.

"Spare me of politics and issues of faith Voro. I am a commander of ships, not a member of the Council, hence it is not my business to debate in matters of influence and "good-will" as you name it. My business is to command my ships and destroy as many human ships as I can." Kusovai said. He was serious only when it came to the matter of warfare and commanding ships, speaking almost jokingly about all other things.

"You may take these things lightly Kusovai but you will find that, in the future, these issues will decide the fate of the Covenant. If things continue to go on the way they have, with the Brutes receiving more and more favour and authority from the Prophets, we Elites will be the ones shunned." Voro said, referring to the political situation back on the Covenant capital, High Charity.

"If it shall ever come to that, then it will be my business and if it is my business, then the Brutes shall suffer my wrath and the wrath of all Elites." Kusovai said firmly. He did not like the Brutes and their matter of doing things yet, for the time being, it was not his concern.

"Let us hope it shall never come to that. The humans prey on any weakness and we cannot be divided in front of them." Voro said.

"I shall see to it. Prepare your warriors for battle Voro, your troops will be in the frontline of the battle to come. I want you to board the human capital ships and, if possible, capture their commanders and any data you can find. I want to find the location of their home world. If we find anything, we will give it to the Prophets, and then you won't have to worry about who has got the upper hand in the Council. Your only grievance will be to destroy the human home world fully, if that is the will of the Prophets." Kusovai said, showing his disdain of the Prophets will once again. He did not agree with the genocidal campaign against humanity yet he had no choice in the matter.

"Understood, Kusovai." Voro said as he left to ready his troops and adorn his battle armour.

As the Covenant Wolf-Pack was preparing to enter slipspace, the evacuation of troops on Caleston had finally finished. The Spartans were all aboard the ships. Randall and Mike were aboard the Atlas while Tom was stationed aboard the Acheron to provide support in case the Covenant attacked once more.

Aboard the Atlas, Randall and Mike were called to Captain Quinn to talk about a possible Covenant attack. They were anxious about fighting, but Mike was having doubts about how safe it was to fight aboard a starship. Randall kept reassuring him that the Covenant wouldn't blow up their own troops.

"Great that the evacuation is finally complete, I'm glad you're here where it's safe. I also want to apologize to you Randall if I was a little...strange when we talked before. I was not feeling so well and I was thinking heavily about things which....well, which are best left aside in a situation like this. This is not the time to talk about the inner fears of a man like me. Back to the task at hand, we have defeated the Covenant once but they'll most probably be back. That's not the last we've seen of their ships." Quinn said to the Spartans. He seemed more at ease than when Randall had spoken to him last time, yet there still seemed that something lay within him, a dormant fear waiting to be awakened.

"What will we have to do in the case of a space battle sir?" Randall asked confidently. He knew that the Spartans would have to defend the ship against boarding action, yet he still wanted confirmation.

"If the Covenant board the ship, you will have to keep them from finding any information about Earth and destroying the ship or...ultimately...kill as many of them as you can before abandoning the ship. This of course, only in the case the defenses of the ship fail and the Covenant ships keep bombarding us from space. If they do not board, you will be forced to sit and watch or, if the situation calls for it, try to board one of the Covenant ships. I hope it will not come to that however." Captain Quinn said.

"Understood sir, we'll be heading back to our quarters now if you don't need us anymore." Randall said to Quinn.

"Understood. Dismissed!" Quinn said as the two Spartans saluted him before leaving.

As he watched them leave, he went through the possibilities of a battle with the Covenant in his mind. He best hoped that the Covenant would try to board the ship, since that would give him more time to weaken the Covenant ships with his MAC guns and maybe even destroy some of them with his SHIVA nukes. His best hopes however, were that the Covenant wouldn't appear at all. Pinpointing slipspace coordinates was not an easy job however, and it required time. Time Quinn didn't have.

Meanwhile, Tom on the Acheron suited up for battle. He prepared his weapons and checked out his armour extensively. Computerized read-outs were always available, but Spartans took no chances when it came to their armour. Tom loaded his personal handguns, the latest M6G magnums to appear, while polishing the gun barrel of his MA5B ICWS Assault Riffle. He also loaded up on grenades, even though they were hazardous to use near view ports which might very well be blown off. After he was finished with his weapons, Tom asked a question, seemingly to no one.

"What are my chances?" Tom asked, looking blankly.

"Do you want me to give you a straight and practical answer, or do you want me to humour you with statistics. I've got plenty of those just waiting for a dilligent listener." a voice responded in Tom's helmet. It was his on-board AI. All Spartans wearing the Mjolnir Mk V armour were issued an AI which could be plugged in the neural interface of the suit. They were invaluable additions to the Spartans, being mobile sources of friendly troop movement, communications and general battlefield information. Spartans were only issued "smart" AIs which had an effective life expectancy of about 7 years. Smart AIs literally "thought" themselves to death, since the more the AI collected data, the less "thinking" space it had to work with.

"Spare me of your statistics Durendal. Give me a straight answer." Tom said to the AI. Each AI had an individual hologram projection which best illustrated his or her personality. Durendal's hologram was a sword which changed shape continously.

"Very well then. Your chances are small to medium. If your proximity with the life-pods changes however, so do your chances to survive. In theory, should the ship be severely damaged by the Covenant ships, you could board a life-pod and escape. That is, if enemy star-fighters do not spot and intercept you. Then you'd be "toast" as you humans call it. Vaporized." Durendal said. He had a bad tendency of over-detailing things when not necesary. When needed however, he could cut through problems like a sword would cut through flesh.

"Alright Durendal, I get it. Stick to the life-pods. Are the ship's sensors detecting anything?" Tom asked. After a short pause, he received an answer.

"Yes. Incoming contacts are approaching with great speed. 18 of them. E.T.A 2 hours. We won't have time to complete the splipspace jump so we're gonna have to fight them. You'd better suit up and report to the bridge to see where we're needed." Durendal said, cutting through matters fast.

"So now there's a "we" involved in this? Since when were you taking credit for my activity?" Tom asked sarcastically.

"Since we were connected. Now let's go. If you want, I'll shut down for the rest of the battle and see how you manage on your own." Durendal said. As well as a tendency to sometimes give too many details, Durendal got upset pretty easily.

"As if that would be a new experience for me. Give me an uplink with Randall as "we" proceed to the bridge." Tom said. Tom had been in countless battles before and he could very well handle himself without the need of an AI.

"Proceeding...uplink in progress...done!" Durendal said as he connected the two Spartans together via their COMM. system.

"Did you get the bad news Randall?" Tom asked.

"Yeah, me and Mike we're just suiting up. Talk to you after it's over." Randall said as he got his equipment. He didn't like interrruptions which didn't allow him to focus on the task at hand.

"If any of us is gonna be around when it's over. Good luck." Tom said.

"Kill as many of the bastards as you can. Over and out." Randall said as he closed the uplink.

All 3 of them were now ready to do what they had trained 12 years for. Wining battles. Their first battle with Kusovai's Wolf-Pack was just 2 hours away...
~~~
That was it for this dialogue heavy part. I hope you enjoyed it.

This post has been edited by Agent Griff: May 14 2007, 08:34 PM