Operation: DRAGOON

Chapter One

Spartan-A196, aboard UNSC Prowler Shadow Boxer, Slipstream Space – unknown coordinates. 0700 Hours, December 03, 2552 (Military Calendar)

A small buzzer sounded, echoing around the small room and made the sole occupant, Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-A196, Lisa, open her eyes and woke up.

She stared at the metal ceiling of her quarters for a moment then brought her hand down on the alarm clock built into her bedside cabinet, silencing it, then slowly got out of bed, easing the stiffness from her muscles and reached for her service fatigues, worn and faded from years of use.

They were quickly donned, covering up a plethora of scars and burns that covered the Spartan’s pale body, reminders of a hard life fighting against a merciless foe. Lisa laced up her boots then left the room, ducking her seven foot tall frame under the hatchway as she headed for the bridge.

She was aboard a prowler, stealth ships used solely by the Office of Naval Intelligence for all manner of operations from laying nuclear minefields in battle to gathering electronic data on the enemy ahead of an all out attack, taking part in a long duration, highly classified operation targeting the Insurrection, human rebels that wanted out of the Unified Earth Government and its principle fighting force the United Nations Space Command.

Her mission for the past seven months, and that of the prowler’s crew, was to search the outer limits of UNSC controlled space for hints of Insurrectionist activity and quell it if possible. Or, failing that, engage in guerrilla warfare against them until reinforcements from mainline Navy and Marine forces could arrive and tackle the rebels more directly.

So far, six planets had been targeted and three Insurrectionist encampments had been wiped out with minimal UNSC losses but lately their searches had been turning up nothing but abandoned hideouts, their insides stripped and torched.

This had been the pattern Lisa followed until during her last exploration of a deserted Innie stronghold, she had uncovered an intact data chip containing coordinates for a star system several light years outside Human controlled space.

The Shadow Boxer had jumped to the remote system the moment Lisa was back onboard, a little over six weeks ago, and now, if the NAV computer’s estimate was accurate, they would be arriving any time soon.

She stepped onto the bridge where the officers in charge of the ship sat at their stations, watching the screens for any alarming changes.

Lisa passed them by and came to a halt behind the woman in charge of the entire prowler, Commander Eva Colbert.

The Spartan stood beside her, towering over the diminutive woman with ease, and clasped both hands behind her back as the pair looked through the forward view screen into the inky void that was Slipspace.

‘Ready to get back to work, Spartan?’ Colbert said, looking up at Lisa.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Lisa said. She hated being on ships. No real gravity, no real atmosphere, no control. Ground pounders were just cargo in space.

‘Good,’ Colbert said, turning back to the void. ‘NAV says that we’ve got another two hours before arriving at our next stop. I want you geared up and ready before then.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Lisa said. She saluted and made her way to another of the prowler’s rooms, repurposed to serve as her armour bay.

Inside was a set of MJOLNIR Mark V, the iconic armour of Spartans everywhere. It looked imposing and impenetrable, even empty, and weighed close to half a ton. Despite this, the armour felt as light as air when worn, thanks in part to force multiplying circuits and a reactive metal liquid crystal layer that boosted her already immense speed and strength to superhuman levels.

Lisa had modified it as well, swapping certain parts to suit her skill set and operating methods. She worked alone, going up against the Insurrectionists by herself or with little support, and used stealth to whittle down the enemy. As such, her helmet was taken from the RECON armour variant to reduce her infrared emission and reflections from her visor, tinted a non-reflective black to reduce this further.

Her shoulders had different attachments to each other, neither of them coming from the RECON system. On Lisa’s left was an up-armoured multi-threat pauldron, a thick, rounded plate that gave her additional protection when firing a sniper rifle from counter attack, similar to the ODST Sharpshooter BDU given to their marksmen, while the right shoulder was protected by an up-armoured base security pauldron, essentially an extra piece of metal wrapped around her shoulder that offered her arm freedom of movement and protection at the same time.

On the MJOLNIR’s chest were several pouches for ammo and other small supplies that Lisa might need quickly, such as lock picking equipment and a rugged data pad for electronic locks.

Attached to the leg was a basic medical kit, containing a canister of biofoam and some stimpacks, just enough to keep Lisa combat capable for a few hours at least in case she suffered a crippling injury.

Everything had a matte grey finish.

The doors leading into the armour bay opened and a team of technicians entered, ready to help Lisa don her armour.

She disrobed and stepped into the middle of the room as they brought over the black bodysuit.

Spartan-A196, aboard UNSC Prowler Shadow Boxer, Slipstream Space – unknown coordinates. 0941 Hours, December 03, 2552 (Military Calendar)

Now fully armoured, Lisa stepped back onto the bridge, each step making dull thuds as half a ton of Spartan came down on the metal deck. Several on the bridge glanced uneasily at Lisa as she passed, some flicking to the suppressed battle rifle on her back.

She came to a halt behind Colbert as the Commander sat in her chair, eyes locked on the view screen.

‘Coming out of slipspace in ten seconds,’ the lieutenant on NAV called out. ‘Five seconds, four, three, two seconds, one.’

A bout of deceleration rocked the ship as it transition back into normal space, stars filling the viewscreen.

‘New course, two-two-five by zero-four-zero,’ Colbert ordered. ‘Three tenths full.’

Prowler guidelines called for an immediate course correction the moment the stealth ship left Slipspace, in case there was anything that gave away their transition. They were woefully underpowered against anything bigger than a Longsword Interceptor. Being invisible was their only strength and form of protection.

‘Sensors, anything?’ Colbert asked as the Boxer settled on its new heading.

‘No, ma’am. I’m not picking anything up, human or Covenant.’

Lisa breathed an inward sigh of relief, as did everyone else on the bridge.

The lone prowler could deal with a decent sized Insurrectionist occupation, but there was no way it could tackle anything the alien juggernaut fielded. Not with only one soldier onboard.

Colbert nodded. ‘All right. NAV, find me the nearest inhabitable planet and put us in orbit over it.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Scanning.’ The officer on the NAV station scanned the system they were in, nodded once, then typed in a string of commands. ‘Planet found, five million kilometres distance. Moving us towards it at one third power.’

The prowler moved, whisper quiet, towards a lone planet orbiting a brilliant yellow sun, looking similar to Earth. There were green and brown continents, deep blue oceans and polar ice caps, all beneath a brilliant white cloud cover.

Lisa cocked her head to the side as she watched the planet get closer, thinking. Why had the Insurrectionists come here? Why come to a planet so far from everywhere else? Did it contain a valuable resource they were extracting and selling to fund their operations? Or was it simply because of the remoteness of the system?

‘Coming into orbit now.’

A rumble went through the ship as it settled on an orbital path high above the planet.

‘Start a detailed scan of the planet,’ Colbert said. ‘I want to know why the Innies had coordinates leading here.’

‘Aye, Commander.’

Onscreen, high resolution images of the surface below began flashing by. Vast unspoiled forests, sparkling blue seas, immense deserts, rolling grasslands. It was picturesque.

The officer on sensors cocked his head to the side, like Lisa had, but in confusion rather than thought.

‘Ma’am, I’m picking up some weird energy signatures,’ he said. ‘Unknown type. It’s not in our database.’

‘Source?’ Colbert asked.

‘Widespread, but there are three significant locations.’ He tapped in a command and the viewscreen shifted to display the overall image the prowler had taken of the planet and three waypoints faded into existence on top of it.

‘Zoom and enhance, all three,’ Colbert ordered. ‘Spartan, get ready for a hard drop. Soon as we’ve figured these things out, you’re going down.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Lisa said, snapping off a salute before heading to the Boxer’s HEV launch bay, a recent addition to a stealth ship to let it deploy the lone Spartan with a much lower chance of being detected. A Pelican would have taken up too much room and presented a radar target for any ships nearby, but the small profile of the drop pod made it ideal.

She packed it with her equipment, a suppressed battle rifle and pistol, four weeks worth of food and supplies, several shaped charges and cans of C7 foaming explosive, then climbed into the seat.

‘We’re having some difficulty indentifying the sources of these energy readings, Spartan,’ Colbert said over Lisa’s COM. ‘It’s interfering with our systems and stopping us from getting a clearer picture. The more we zoom, the more blurred it gets. You’ll be going in blind.’

‘Understood, ma’am,’ Lisa said.

‘We’ll drop you as close to one of the sources as we can but after that, keep COM chatter to a minimum.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Another buzzer began sounding, counting down the time until the drop pod would be launched out of the ship and to the surface below.

‘Good luck down there.’

Lisa’s pod blew clear of the Boxer, quickly accelerating to the planet below as gravity took hold of the small craft and pulled it closer.

Spartan-A196, surface of unnamed planet. 1025 Hours, December 03, 2552 (Military Calendar)

The pod landed without incident and Lisa was walking away from it with all her supplies within five minutes of jumping out the door, rifle raised and sweeping the area for potential threats.

There hadn’t been any, just an overgrown and noisy forest with branches so thick they blotted out the sky and cast everything in perpetual shadow.

Lisa hefted her rifle and pressed on in the vague direction of one of three energy sources. It was somewhere to her north, maybe a few dozen kilometres distant, and sat in the middle of what had looked to be rolling hills and flat, open ground but it was hard to be sure. A dense cloud cover had obscured the Spartan’s view of the ride down and though her mission clock said mid-morning, the local time was much later, almost the middle of the night, and darkness had covered everything else.

It made little difference to Lisa. Between augmented eyes and low light optics built into her armour, everything was as bright as day. She trudged onwards, stepping over uprooted trees and under low lying branches with the occasional murky pond making her divert from an otherwise straight route.

Eventually, the trees began to thin out and give way to wide open fields that were too neat to be unmanaged which, plus a rough dirt trail, pointed at this place being inhabited and for some time, too. The Spartan could see that the dirt was packed down hard. Someone or something had been using it for a while.

She traced the flow of the path with her eyes than followed it, thirty metres to the left, ready to jump down in case she saw anyone.

A small window appeared in Lisa’s HUD, a live feed from overhead. The STARS, or Stealth Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance Satellite, had been deployed by the Boxer and was now looking down on her position from high orbit.

Lisa accessed it and manipulated the satellite to follow the path as far as possible, losing sight of it a few kilometres from her location as it came within range of the unknown energy source which, it turned out, was still affecting their sensors.

Closing the window, she carried on following the path, moving silently despite the weight of her armour and array of equipment attached to it.

Spartan-A196, surface of unnamed planet, near unidentified energy source. 1217 Hours, December 03, 2552 (Military Calendar)

It took Lisa close to two hours to reach the outer limits of the STARS blind spot and along the way, she hadn’t seen anything that she’d classify as concerning or require breaking radio silence to report, just the odd sign of the planet being inhabited.

Small things, like a discarded bag or a piece of broken glass that had been worn smooth by wind and rain, but the closer to the energy source she got, the more obvious the signs were.

Tilled fields, waiting to be seeded. Rows of trees, too straight to be natural. Flowerbeds, bare and lifeless.

It made questions form in Lisa’s mind. If Insurrectionists were here, why did everything appear so low tech? There were no farm machines, no dedicated roads to and from the fields, no metal fences to outline the borders of farms. Nothing.

The Insurrectionists could have, however, gone for a low technology to hide their presence but every other encampment Lisa had seen was outfitted with all manner of technology, from outdated rifles and pistols to top of the line motion sensors and cameras. She had even seen Jotun farming machines on one or two bases being used for crop collection, and those camps had held upwards of two hundred people.

So why wasn’t she seeing that here?

Lisa frowned inside her helmet and kept walking, heading towards the brow of a hill that she hoped was separating her from the energy source and the answers to her questions.

She slowed and dropped to a crouch, then lay flat on her stomach and began crawling forwards, taking her time. Fast moves would only draw attention to her, something Lisa hoped to avoid for as long as possible.

She reached the brow of the hill, coming out in the middle of a grassy bush. With careful, deliberate movements, Lisa poked the barrel of her battle rifle out and peered down the scope at the landscape beyond.

Her eyebrows momentarily twitched upwards in surprise.

For an energy source of unknown origin, it certainly looked a lot like a town straight out of a child’s cartoon.