Six looked out the window. God, Reach was beautiful to look at in space. However, he knew that parts of that beauty were being destroyed. Why did this war have to happen? What were the elites truly trying to gain from all this destruction? Self-righteousness? No matter what it was, it was still killing those he cared for, and as a Spartan, it was his job to fight it.

A red dot on his H.U.D caused six to whip around, pointing his M8G magnum towards the direction the red dot was. The only thing that meet him was a lone grunt. The small creature stared at him, wide eyed. Six smiled, even though the grunt couldn't see it, for he had his security helmet on. He holstered his magnum, and started walking towards it. The thing stood there paralyzed with fear. He laughed, standing in front of the creature. "Oh, you are so going to die."

With that, the grunt yelled something unintelligible, turned and ran. Yet, it didn't get far. Six tackled the small thing, and stabbed his seven inch, standard issue combat knife into it's head. The grunt was harmless, yet his friend weren't. He didn't want it running back, and yelling about how a Spartan was at the loading bay. He had already killed three ultra-class elites, he didn't want to fight any more than he had to. Yet the screaming of the grunt attracted more attention than he liked.

Two elites, both minor-class, started firing at Six, as he dashed towards the pelican holding the bomb he was going to arm on Jorge's go. When both elites started cooling their weapons, he moved. Running at them, Six fired half a clip from his MA37 assault rifle into one of the elites. When it fell dead, Six crashed into the other. Rolling, Six tried to gain dominance, but failed, as they stopped, the elite on top. It was about to shove it's energy sword, coming out of its gauntlet, into Six's visor, so he had to act fast. Grabbing the elite's arm with his right hand, Six used his free hand to pull out his security knife, and stabbed it into the elite's throat, yet it wasn't dead. It reared back in pain crying and grunting to pull the knife out. With it's focus elsewhere, Six pulled his other knife out, and with the flick of his wrist, implanted said knife into the elite's skull.

After collecting his weapons, he heard a beeping noise come from the pelican. With the worst in mind, Six ran over to the slip-space drive that was armed to send half of the cruiser into oblivion, and saw that his worst fear was realized. The timer was fried. The only way for it to go off was to be detonated manually. "Fuck..." he hissed.

A yellow dot caught his attention on his motion tracker. Friendly. "Jorge." he said, acknowledging his return.

"Six, the cruiser is on its way to the super carrier. Lets go home." Jorge replied proudly.

"I can't."

"What?"

"The timers fried. It has to be fired manually." Jorge reared in realization.

"No! No, I'm not letting you do that, Six. We are getting off together!"

"DON'T YOU GET IT?!" Six yelled. " This is the best, and possibly only, way to take the super carrier out, and I'm not gonna fail the mission just because you don't want me to die!" He took a few breaths trying to calm himself. "We' re Spartans, Jorge. We do what we have to, to complete the mission. I'm doing this." Jorge sighed.

"Then... I'll stay. You go down there, and help the fight."

"No!"

"I'm sorry, but your going down there." With that Jorge grabbed Six and hefted him up. It took Six a second to realize what he was going to do: throw him out. Six would survive, locking his armor would take most of the heat and impact force, but that wasn't going to happen. After squirming a bit, Six got his right arm free, and punched Jorge across the helmet. He was dropped, not out of pain, but shock.

"Jorge, your a S-II." Six started "Your stronger than me. They need strong men down there. They need you."

"Six, no..." but was stopped when Six put a hand on Jorge's armor.

"Don't deny me this." Six couldn't tell, but Jorge's eyes were wet with tears. Jorge sighed, defeated.

"Then... God speed Spartan." They both gave salute.

Jorge climbed into the pelican, and with one last wave of goodbye, he took off.

"Goodbye, Jorge." Six said, and looked back out the window. "Goodbye, Reach..." Tears were welling in his eyes. This was it. For Jorge, for Noble, for Reach. He heard Sanghillian chatter on the radio, trying to confirm the ship was friendly. Picking up the radio, Six spoke into it. "I'll see you in hell, you mother fuckers." With that, he heard yelling on the other end, as he hit the panel to activate the slip stream. He closed his eyes, and prayed.

Author's Note

Edit: 12/16/2013