Halo: The Interlopers

It had been more than four months now. Four months since Knife team had escaped that ship, four months since they’d rescued Shining Armor and Cadence from changelings and Mambas, four months since they’d stopped an attempted coup by Covenant remnants, four months since the UNSC had made peaceful first contact with Equis.

A lot had changed in those few months. Almost a hundred million humans migrated to Equis, mostly Equestria. Shining Armor had come out of his coma, and resumed his duty as captain of the Royal Guard. The UNSC had sent a few more ships to the Eagle Sword fleet that still fought with the CM forces and Covenant remnants in the Equis system; they hadn’t made any real progress, but there hadn’t been any major attacks either.

It was a hot October afternoon in Bittery Park, where Colonel Mark Thompson and Twilight Sparkle were starting an interview for the widely read and respected New Yoke Times. When the Times offered to interview Twilight a few weeks earlier, she wrote a letter to tell Princess Celestia about it, and she requested that Mark go with her as a bodyguard.

Then the Times caught wind of that and requested to interview him as well. Mark cleared it with his superiors, who authorized him to answer any questions posed at his discretion; they trusted him not to divulge any classified information.

Mark wore military issue woodland camouflage fatigues with the sleeves rolled up, he also had grown his hair out somewhat long, as well as a beard; he hadn’t had much time to shave during the continuous stream of operations he had been assigned. Emmerich claimed he looked “like Naked Snake, but with darker hair, a tan and brown eyes”. Being in a civilian area, he wasn’t wearing any armor either; the only protection he had was a combat knife sheathed on his belt.

“Okay,” Their interviewer, Flank West, began. “Ms. Sparkle, I understand you were present for several major events during the beginning of this conflict.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“You were also among some of the first ponies to see the Covenant. What was that like?”

“Well, it was pretty scary actually. It was almost as scary when the humans fought back. I’d thought them to be peaceful, but finding out they’d been at war with the Covenant for thirty years was a shock; I thought that since they wanted peaceful relations they were a peaceful race.”

“You’re known around Ponyville and Canterlot as a bookworm; don’t you think that could’ve been the result of idealism about alien life?”

“I-I-Well-I suppose so…” Twilight was visibly flustered at this question.

“All right. Colonel Thompson, there is a small but growing group opposed to any human presence on this planet for any reason. What would you say to them? ”

“Well, let’s say for instance, that both the good humans who make up over ninety-nine percent of our population and the bad humans that make less than one percent leave. That leaves your planet, which lacks a unified government or military, to fight off a fleet of Covenant starships. Nothing you have can beat them.”

“Are you sure? I mean we have nuclear weapons.” The reporter seemed to curious now.

“Let me tell you something. The most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated on your planet was a mere ten megatons. The average human nuke at this point is thirty megatons, and that is more often than not insufficient to crack the shields on their ships. Humanity was outmatched when we fought them, and our entire race would’ve been exterminated if the Covenant hadn’t had a civil war.”

“Twilight, you’ve got a very close relationship with Princess Celestia what can you tell us about her?”

“Well, she’s actually much more approachable than you’d think. She’s kind and friendly, and very caring. She’s practically a second mother to me.”

“Colonel, what’s it like travelling through space?”

“Not as wondrous as you’d think, or at least not in the military. The food’s decent, showers are short, and the recreation onboard the ships is fairly barebones. Plus you get desensitized after a while, take it for granted, and focus more on the danger out there. Of course, I could just be juxtaposing my own opinions on the whole of the UNSC, so you should probably take what I said with a grain of salt.”

“I see. Tw-”

A massive crash cut off the reporter. Smooth, bulbous aircraft emerged from the bay, and headed towards the city. The source of the sound seemed to be a cruise liner that was headed into the harbor; it had been flipped as half a dozen Phantoms emerged from under it.

“Shit, Phantoms! Everypony down!”

The aircraft opened its side bays partially, and a flurry of plasma bolts scorched the park, scoring hits on several civilians. They died almost instantly, the heat from the plasma flash-vaporizing their blood and bursting their veins, as well as causing fourth-degree burns on the impact points.

“Come on, let’s move! We need to get to cover!” Mark barked.

Confused civilians panicked and scattered, dominated by fear of whatever had just attacked. The park was dominated with their cries.

“Mommy! Mommy! Wake up Mommy!”

“Oh dear Celestia, what’s happening?”

“Aliens, run!”

“What's going on?”

Mark produced a chatter from his fatigues. He needed backup fast.

“Emmerich, what’re the nearest allied bases? Human, pony, anything!”

“There’s a UNSC outpost just three hundred meters north of your postion, and there are several more throughout the city. There’s also a large Equestrian military base twenty-three kilometers west of Manehattan, with a pair of battalions totalling around twelve hundred UNSC Army personnel and five thousand Equestrian soldiers stationed there, as well as UNSC and Equestrian aircraft on-site. What’s going on down there?”

“Covenant forces are attacking the city. I don’t know why, but they’re here, and they’re just- Just coming out of the water! Get the word out, I have a visual on at least-Jesus!”

A Scarab emerged from the water, destroying a suspension bridge as it did so, which in turn created horrible noises of groaning metal and snapping cables. It crawled its way into the city streets, crushing any obstacle in its path. The walker maneuvered without any problem into the city streets and fired its main cannon, carving a hundred-meter-long ditch. Phantoms trailed it, and a Covenant DPV-class heavy destroyer dropped out of slipspace just over midtown.

“Okay, I can’t even count them now, and a goddamn Scarab just joined the party, a destroyer too! Get backup here ASAP!” Mark finished.

“I’m on it. I’ll tell the brass and have them get boots on the ground,” Emmerich replied, urgency apparent in his voice.

“What’s going on?” Twilight asked, visibly terrified.

“We’ve got the bad luck to be here during an invasion, that’s what.” He decided to try and rally the survivors in the park. “If you’re still breathing, follow me! There’s a UNSC outpost north of here!”

His yelling had the desired effect, and his uniform added to the authority he tried to project. He ran northwards, his neural implants indicating the position of the outpost and superimposing it on his vision. This essentially gave him a barebones HUD; it’d show the same things his armor would show him, except a motion tracker, wound severity and shields. He could turn it on and off as often as he wished, whenever he wished, instantly and without consequence, so he could focus on a given task such as sleeping. In this case he had opted to leave it on during his stay in the city, reasoning that he might have trouble finding his way around the city otherwise.

When the small crowd reached the outpost, the eight or so soldiers there were practically handing out weapons.

“Anypony who knows how to fire a gun, step forward! We’ll give you whatever we can spare. If we’ve got armor that can fit you, we’ll give you what we can.” A corporal yelled. About a dozen ponies stepped forwards, and three humans. When Mark strode towards the small building, the noncom saluted and motioned him inside. He stopped West and Twilight however.

Inside the structure, a sergeant greeted him with a weary smile; he’d picked the wrong night to be sleepless.

“An officer!” He exclaimed, saluting as he did so. “Sergeant Ahmed Abdullah, sir. My post isn't equipped to take on a Covie invasion force, or to equip a resistance. I suppose we’ve got enough to handle a platoon of CMs, but we can’t hold this position without backup.”

“I just contacted the folks in orbit a minute ago, they’re scrambling UNSC and Equestrian forces from a base twenty-three klicks west of here. Right now, I need armor and weapons.”

“Right this way.”

Sergeant Abdullah led him to the small armory, where Mark geared up. He strapped on kneepads and slipped on an M52B torso armor piece, forgoing shoulder pads, thigh protection and a helmet, but only due to the absence of those items in the armory. He then grabbed a loaded M6G pistol and ten spare magazines. There weren’t any other guns left besides the sidearms, so he had to settle for the magnum. He would make it work.

He also grabbed a throat microphone and earpiece, which he hooked up to his chatter, and four M9 fragmentation grenades. Mark strapped on a backpack with three days’ worth of supplies, and strolled out of the building, his pistol holstered. Twilight was waiting for him, and looked anxious.

“Colonel, I have news, good news, and bad news,” Emmerich began, patching into Mark’s makeshift radio. Mark put his hand on his earpiece to keep out extra sound.

“The news is that most of the Covenant are deployed in Canteral Park and uptown, and that most of the chaos downtown is CM forces. The good news is that the Equestrian base I mentioned earlier, Dovah JSB, is scrambling its aircraft to establish a no-fly zone over Manehattan. They’ll cover the advancing Royal Equestrian Army forces. The REAF jets should be there within a few minutes, and REA forces within an hour. The bad news is UNSC support will not be able to deploy in large numbers; most of the UNSC personnel at Dovah are being sent to counter a Covenant attack in Caneighda. They’ll be able to spare about four hundred troops at most, plus vehicles. Those forces will take about twenty-four hours to prepare, but several platoons of ODSTs are being dropped in as we speak to ease the wait.”

“Fuck! They expect us to repel two invading forces with just that?”

“I’m sorry Colonel, but things are getting hectic up north and we can’t organize a response any sooner than that.”

Mark sighed. “Acknowledged,” he replied before cutting the link.

“What’s going on?” Twilight asked.

“Well, the REAF is a few minutes out, the REA is an hour out, ODSTs are dropping into our area to buy time, and we’ll only get about four hundred UNSC troops who won’t even get here for twenty-four hours. In short: we’re fucked.”

“Do you really think we’re in that much trouble?” Twilight asked. She trusted Mark’s judgment, but she also hoped that he was simply exaggerating.

“Well, maybe not that much trouble, but-”

Mark was cut off by the sound of Banshees in the distance. He saw the insect-like aircraft fire a barrage of plasma at the crowd, and drop fuel rods on them; he tackled Twilight to the ground, attempting to shield her from any potential harm. The plasma bolts impacted six meters away, but the heat could still be felt from where they were.

“Okay,” Mark corrected himself. “Maybe we are in that much trouble.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mark saw a grey dot approaching rapidly from the west. In mere seconds it passed over them, and grey streaks struck multiple Banshees, destroying each of them.

“Maybe you should stop talking about how deep we’re in it,” Twilight suggested with a weak smile.

“I was just about to say that,” Mark concurred. “We need to ditch this place, we’re too damn exposed.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, not liking where this was going. “Are you proposing that we go into the city?”

“Exactly.”

“That doesn’t seem like a very good idea…”

“We have two choices. Number one: we stay in this park and wait exactly twenty-three-and-a-half hours for the full extent of our backup to arrive, hoping for both a victory that seems unlikely given the known factors and for mere survival in this poorly defended area. Number two: we leave behind the false sense of security of this park and go down into the rabbit hole. Both choices are inherently risky, but in one of them we can find shelter and other soldiers.”

Twilight sighed deeply, realizing he had a point. “Fine, I suppose we should try and find someplace to hide.”

Mark patted her on the back and smiled. “Glad you agree.”

The two of them walked briskly toward the park’s exit, where they would be able to get to the city itself. They could see the smoke coming from midtown from where they were, and the smells of smoke, ash, and dust permeated the air.

When they reached the exit, the streets were blocked by rubble, effectively halting them. The rubble was covered in sharp objects, precluding the possibility of simply going over it.

Twilight smirked at Mark. “Any more bright ideas?”

Mark didn’t respond, instead he walked over to a sewer grate. It wasn’t a metal manhole leading to a deep underground sewer filled with unsanitary horrors; it was to access a sort of upper sewer where rainwater and other things from street-level would collect. There was a small padlock on the grate, holding it shut.

“Oh, I’ve got an idea,” Mark replied with a grin. He drew his combat knife, and smashed the padlock with the butt of the knife, causing the grate to fall open.

“I’m okay with getting a little dirty, but going in a sewer, I don’t know…”

“Relax, it’s not the part that all the toilets flush to; it’s the one that catches rainwater and lost coins and the occasional piece of jewelry.” Mark dropped into the sewer, falling all of three meters. “It’s only about ten feet, and I’ll catch you!”

Reluctantly, Twilight leapt into the sewer, and into Mark’s arms. He caught her without any problem, and set her down. The water in the sewer was shallow, only an inch deep. The smell was milder than expected too; the only bodily waste products would likely be from runoff from pets that had been walked.

“You’re not planning on staying in the sewers, are you?” Twilight asked.

“Hell no. We’re not heading to the subway either; that’d probably be the first place people would take shelter, and it’d be crowded. What we’ll do is head back to the apartment we were staying at, which isn’t too far from here. Then we’ll stay there until we figure out how the hell we’re getting off this island. Sound good?”

“Okay. We need to plan our next actions, so I can go with this as an interim measure,” Twilight consented, nodding.

Mark drew his pistol and proceeded down the tunnel.

***

Ship Master Naso ‘Refumee observed the excavation from the bridge of his heavy destroyer; the Fleet Master had entrusted ‘Refuumee and his vessel with the command and coordination of the invading forces, even though not all of them had come from his ship.

He was lucky to have a ship at all; his elder brother had been the leader of a large congregation of heretics situated in a gas mine, and he had been raised alongside him by the same uncle, as Sangheili tradition dictated. This shame bore heavily upon his shoulders, and many judged him to be to unreliable based solely on his brother’s heresy; despite this, Fleet Master Rolo ‘Duronee had personally witnessed ‘Refumee’s devotion and skill and promoted him to the command of a ship after the fall of High Charity to the Flood.

In a show of loyalty and gratitude, ‘Refumee followed ‘Duronee even after the Fleet Master had had a falling out with the leaders of the Sangheili military. He was one of the first disciples as ‘Duronee sought to recreate the Covenant, and thus became one of the Fleet Master’s most trusted followers. Because of his startlingly vast knowledge of Forerunner technology, he was often sent to command operations where such technology was involved.

This was one such operation. The creatures that built the city below, disgusting in their current cultural similarity to the humans, had unknowingly built atop an installation that was built by the hands of both Sangheili and Forerunner over a hundred thousand years ago, before the Forerunners completed their ascension to godhood.

Below him, multiple Locust mining platforms and a single Scarab dug up the fertile park that lay in the center of the metropolis. Already, a few points could be seen of the ancient structure, the elegant angular architecture of the Forerunners evident under the dirt that clung to it.

***

Hours later, Mark and Twilight had reached the apartment building they were staying at for their supposedly brief visit to Manehattan. It was a modest brick building, only seven stories high. No lights inside could be seen from the streets in the recently descended night.

“Think it’s safe to go in?” Twilight whispered.

“Only one way to find out,” Was Mark’s response.

Mark opened the door, and activated the flashlight mounted on his sidearm. He surveyed the lobby, illuminating it with the weapon, and gestured for Twilight to follow him. She did so, and the pair crept forwards. Mark entered an office and opened a metal box on the wall.

“Okay, the elevators are working fine, but everything else is fried. We won’t have to use the stairs, but we’ll have darkness no matter what.”

“I can use my magic to light up the room some, will that help?” Twilight offered quietly.

“Go ahead, but don’t put out too much light; we don’t want someone just walking down the street to see lights coming from a window,” Mark answered just as quietly.

Twilight put a faint light out from her horn, and the room was bathed in a gentle purple glow. They moved to the elevators, and opened one; the doors worked fine too. The two of them entered the elevator, and Mark pushed the button for the seventh floor.

The ride took about thirty seconds, and the doors failed to open.

“Shit,” Mark swore. “Wait, hold on.”

There was the distinctive sound of Falcons in the background. The Falcon had two rotors, one on each side mounted on a nacelle; but what made it sound unique was the small jet engines that were also on each nacelle.

Mark knew that it had to be Black Mambas on the roof, as Emmerich had warned him that they had attacked southern Manehattan, and that there wouldn’t be any UNSC forces arriving like that for nineteen hours.

“Cobalt four, take point! Two and three, back him up! Five through twelve, follow them, we’re clearing this building!” Came yelling from the roof.

Mark assessed his options. They’ll probably search the elevators for trapped survivors, and they definitely won’t take kindly to us. I’m too close in to use my grenades with any effectiveness, and I can’t take out twelve armored opponents in one go of close combat with just an eight-round magazine, even if I use human shields and hand-to-hand combat. There’s still one more option, though…

“Okay, stay calm,” Mark began, noting the terror on Twilight’s face. “If we’re lucky they won’t find us, but I can’t fight them all off if they do. If that happens, they won’t be too kind to us…”

They heard a shotgun blow a door off of its hinges.

“Mark, I’m sorry about those things I said to you a few months ago. I’m glad you saved my brother, and I understand why you didn’t tell me how bad off he was. He’s alive and back to his job now because of you.”

A dozen pairs of boots advanced down the stairs from the roof.

“Thanks, Twi. I’m really sorry I got you into this whole mess.”

“It’s okay.”

They embraced, and Twilight closed her eyes, tears flowing from them. Mark pulled the slide on his M6G back a little, just enough to see if there was a round chambered. There was, and his HUD told him that he indeed had a full magazine.

“Six and eight, get that elevator open; we’re clearing out any tenants!”

Mark looked up, as if he sought approval from someone up above; he decided he wouldn’t get it, and Twilight probably wouldn’t consent either.

Two shots rang out inside the elevator, spaced a second apart.