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Prodigal Son: Part 1
Posted By: Scott D
Date: 29 February 2004, 10:28 AM
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Prodigal Son: SPARTAN 079 -Scott-
Chapter 1: To begin in the beginning.
The eye of the storm was coming, and flurry of the carbon storm was thinning, Spartan 079 knew his moment was approaching. He had been dug in for half a day, barely half a kilometer from the enemy encampment, his HUD flared with static from the storm. Inside the golden mask of his blacked out MJOLNIR armor he watched carefully, his hawkish eyes trained on the barely visible blue lights from the bivouac, in his mind he was going over his mission parameters, his hands perfectly still on the ground before him, holding the cables he had used to tie down his make shift camouflage.
This was the rebel encampment on the abandoned mining world Taunith II, a cold desolate world that long lost all of its indigenous life to a dying sun. For over a year and a half the rebel factions had harassed the mining corporations here until finally they had stolen enough, sold enough ore, and pilfered enough of the miners to barter their heavy weapons and put down the local governor's security force. The year was 2526, the fourth of February according to the military calendar, and the UNSC had commissioned the use of small tactical special operations groups to deal with all threats to the military industrial complex. The beginnings of a larger war had spurned massive consolidations of human resources, Scott knew why, he and his family knew why, they had been briefed by their mother, by their father.
The rebel faction was not what to be believed, they were a thorn in the side of the UNSC who had already lost too much in the very beginnings of the conflict that was ebbing away at the fears of every soldier it possessed. The horrors of the battles of the Harvest system campaigns had reached the ears of every man, woman, and child within the whole of human controlled space. In the military there was speculation, and confusion, but ultimately a massive call to order. Taunith was rich in titanium and fossil fuel deposits were readily massed on near the surface, despite its harsh environment and the fact that it was a dead rock in a back water system; it was a valuable dead rock.
In orbit, the small transports were waiting with his back up, when he had penetrated their defenses, when he had planted the charges and detonated their power plant, the ODST's would fall. With the storms raging their drop would be devastating; in the eye of the storm their pods would have at least a seventy percent chance of surviving. Odds that Colonel Abrams could accept, and would be more than willing to risk the lives of the Hell Jumpers in the operation. And with a carbon dust storm, no anti aircraft battery would ever be able to target the troops. The base would be over run, the materials safeguarded, and the UNSC would be able to commission ore processing and ship construction. Scott was never told any of these things, these were merely the thoughts that ran through his mind during his long reconnaissance missions, analyzing every angle as his body and mind went a million directions at once. His psych profile read like a deranged Smart AI, but he was still invaluable to the UNSC, he was one of the few surviving Spartan II's, and to his credit he was damned effective as a soldier, even if he wasn't wired in the conventional way.
In truth Scott had always been different, but that was his gift in the SPARTAN II program, his reaction time and analytical abilities that had made him a perfect saboteur and infiltration specialist. And with the implants and enhancements of the surgical alterations of his body he began to see life and his duties as a soldier in many different ways. Scott focused on the permutations of his mission parameters; there were a hundred different ways to accomplish this mission, with a hundred different after effects. He could enter now, revealed or not and he knew he would personally kill every single soldier in the hardened rebel bunker. The first thought in his head was to use plan beta, to allocate their nuclear arsenal and remote detonate it, but that was the secondary option. His orders were to first take down the generators, kill their satellite uplinks before the eye of the storm widened over their communications array; let the ODSTs do the killing.
He crawled on his belly through the loose black sand, one hand holding the cables to the lead sheet concealing him, the other dragging the massive half ton frame of his armored body. Inch by inch he was moving closer to his goal, the blue lights were becoming more concrete in his visor, the static on his sensors fading, systems rebooting. Within twenty minutes his mission clock began, his fourteen minute window timer ticking off to the left of his HUD, he was already inside their perimeter, following navigational directions from satellite photos, seeing the humongous exhaust stack of the fusion generator buried in the bunker. The generator problem was simple, close the vents, make sure hey could not be opened regardless of what controls were being used. The rebels would panic, and shut down the reactor, going to auxiliary power, plant demolition charges by their launch doors and they will never be able to get the machinery out to open them again. The base is then assaulted, a swarm of troops invades, and acceptable losses are at thirty percent, with a mission survival imperative for the SPARTAN II. If only they'd just let him plant the nuke, he could finish the operation without a single marine loss. Scott grit his teeth, now was the time when his active mind shifted from the analytical debate and after thought to cold efficiency. It always happened this way, as if the clouds parted when his adrenal glands opened up, he saw many options now, and decided on the best coarse.
The first sentry never saw him coming, his hand snatched the man into the leeward shadows, and they walked on set paths marked by steel cables that they were tethered to. The man's communication beacon flared and then went silent as Scott crushed his helmet. The lifeless body was easy enough to conceal in the darkness, he moved on. The encampment held three main structures, the main entrance to the bunker that both concealed and housed the anti-aircraft batteries as well as their primary generators. The southern exit of the bunker's hangar, and more importantly the northern entrance to the personnel barracks. His primary threat would be the troops pouring out in response to his presence, but single troops could always be eliminated, these were rebel forces, not highly trained, and motivated by profiteering.
The second sentry saw him but only because he allowed him to, Scott charged across the courtyard and snatched the man from his cable as the wind flared. His strength, augmented by the suit crushed the man's chest as he slammed him to the ground. The activity lights of the vac-suit faded off and Scott began his slow approach to the exhaust tower. Looming over the base, the oddly orange and black tower was barely eighteen meters tall, but stood like an Athenian obelisk in the face of the stunted cement barracks buildings that sprouted from the ground of the underground bunker. His mission clock read ten minutes reaming until the ODSTs drop, pulling his equipment pack he removed the first of four detonation charges. All of the sudden flood lights of the base filled the swirling sky with harsh unnatural blue light, Scott was exposed. The white light of the barracks doors behind him filled the courtyard. His hands swung the rifle from under his equipment pack, and his legs carried him faster than he anticipated. The darkness parted by the unnatural blue splintered with muzzle flashes. Scott's mind shut down, his instincts took over.
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