1430 Hours, September 11, 2525 / Underground Training Cavern, Reach Military Complex, Planet Reach, Epsilon Eridani System — Combat‑Trial Flag Raid
I hung thirty‑five meters above the deck, boots braced against a limestone outcrop no wider than my thumb, the hemp line biting into the new callus across my palm. The cavern felt like a cathedral someone forgot to fill with pews—humming ventilation, distant drip of condensation, and, below, a scattering of flood‑lights that painted sharp cones over concrete revetments and prefabricated bunkers. Somewhere inside the central blockhouse our objective fluttered: Tango‑striped company flag, one more trophy we weren't supposed to take.
No armor.
No rifles.
Just skin, scars, and a handful of "procured‑unauthorized" supplies—ropes, climbing anchors, and Fhajad's pilfered access key.
Directly beneath me three instructors patrolled in Gen‑I powered armor—gray, box‑angled plates bolted onto servo muscles that whined every time a knee flexed. First generation. Pre‑Mjolnir. Built for men who thought gears could replace training. Normal troopers locked inside that steel had about thirty seconds before feedback spasms buckled their joints and the suit turned them into twitching ballast. The brass still called it safe enough for instructors. I called it overconfidence.
Fhajad crouched in the shadow of a maintenance console halfway up the east wall, fingers ghosting over the panel's touch‑glass. He didn't need to say it; I felt the rhythmic buzz of his bypass spikes bleeding through the comm line—one steady pulse for every firewall dropped.
Kelly dangled two lines to my left, inverted, knees hooked, blue eyes blazing in the gloom. She flashed three fingers: thirty seconds until blackout. Fred and Linda tracked the ground route, silent shapes drifting between rock spurs, ready to breach the bunker once the lights died. John waited below me, shoulders loose, pulse slow—as if gravity petitioned him for permission with every step.
Focus, Leonidas. Center mass. Exhale slow. Calculate the fall, the sprint, the first strike—then let momentum handle the rest.
Fhajad's comm click: final node.
I shifted my grip, felt the cavern breathe in anticipation.
Lights were about to go out, and the instructors in their coffin suits didn't know the dark belonged to us.
Darkness swallowed the cavern in a single snap of breakers—one heartbeat of absolute black, then the panicked clack‑clack of safeties punched off.
I dropped.
Six meters of freefall, rope hissing through my rappel ring; I cut the line with a quick blade flick and landed behind the nearest instructor just as his helmet lamps blinked to life. White cones stabbed the dark, but they weren't fast enough to find me.
Left hand clamped the back of his powered knee joint; right elbow hammered the servo plate. Metal shrieked, gyro seized, and his legs folded the wrong way. He went down hard, suit motors whining in confusion.
The second instructor swung his rifle toward the noise—lamp blasting straight into my pupils. Didn't matter. Aug‑tuned retinas bloomed the glare into harmless bloom. I lunged, flat palm to his visor; crystal cracked, lamps shattered. Total blackout for him. With his sight gone he swung wild, servos lagging. I slipped past, gripped the control module at the nape of his armor collar—thumb, index, twist. The master override snapped like cheap plastic. Suit locked; he turned into two hundred kilos of immobile hardware.
Around the cavern the same choreography played out in scattered sparks: Linda's silhouette knifing a cable bundle, Fred levering an instructor onto his back, Kelly ghost‑stepping through muzzle flashes before a dull thud ended the noise. One by one helmet lamps winked out until only the natural dark remained—ours, comfortable, absolute.
I scooped the MA5 slung across the first instructor's chest, thumbed through the onboard counter: stun rounds, full magazine. Good enough. John's low whistle cut through comms—two sharp, one long: bunker breach now.
Augmented feet found silent traction; rifles came up; seven Spartans slid through the cavern mouth toward the last pool of light where the flag waited, and the real fight was about to begin.
Muzzle flashes stuttered through the cavern like a busted strobe—narrow beams from helmet lamps ricocheting across limestone while the bunker's outer guns came alive. Twin autocannons on ceiling rails swept left‑to‑right, feeding stun‑gel belts that cracked the air hard enough to rattle teeth.
John snapped a hand signal—suppress but pace—and we fanned into a crescent, rifles shouldered, selectors locked to semi.
One breath in.
Exhale.
Pop. A turret lens star‑bloomed, tracer bulb shattered.
Pop‑pop. Two visor lights winked out on the nearest Mark I, suit stumbling as its targeting went dark.
We didn't miss. Couldn't. Augmented stability turned split‑second sight pictures into solved equations. But we counted our cadence—single shots, half‑beats between squeezes—feeding the bunker just enough chaos to blind its defenders without burying Fahjad and Sam inside a storm of ricochets.
Inside, they were ghosts. We caught only glimpses—Fahjad's silhouette slipping under a door servo, Sam's hand flashing a silent countdown through a vent grate. The rest of us played orchestra, every shot a cymbal crash to keep the instructors' attention glued outward.
Plate‑on‑plate impacts rang like distant anvils as Mark I suits struggled to reposition. For all their servo muscle, they moved like rust compared to Spartan speed; every time one tried to push the line, a single dart‑burst or sabot‑round punched him back into cover, suit sensors screaming.
Linda's voice cut across comms, low and even: "Ten seconds."
We tightened the ring, rifles tracking. I felt the pressure in my forearms, the augmented fibers singing for full‑auto release—but we held the rhythm. One. Two.
Eight. Nine—
A high‑pitched whistle sliced through the cacophony—Fahjad's signal, echoing from the bunker's ventilation shaft: objective secure.
All rifles lowered in the same instant—moving from kill lines to free float. John signaled withdrawal, two fingers circling down. We melted into shadow as fast as we'd appeared, instructors scrambling to reacquire targets that were no longer there.
Behind us, inside that bunker, a flag was missing.
Vertical exfil was always faster than the fight.
Kelly reached the rope first—a silent leap, fingers hooking the line she'd anchored hours ago. Servo‑dense muscle hauled her upward in two fluid pulls; boots never scraped the wall. Fred followed, then Linda, each vanishing into the darkness above like knots untying themselves.
I covered the rear with John, backing toward my own line while the instructors below barked confused orders, sweep‑lamps jittering across empty stone. No one risked a blind shot; ricochets in a cave can be just as lethal to friendlies.
John grabbed his rope, nodded once, and ascended—meter‑per‑heartbeat. I clipped onto the last line, felt the hemp tighten, and launched. Hands slid, shoulders burned, but the new body translated effort into altitude faster than gravity could file a complaint.
Ten meters.
Twenty.
Breath steady.
Helmet lamps below shrank to fireflies—then winked out entirely beneath a shelf of rock.
At the ceiling arch I swung to the ledge, rolled onto cold stone beside the team. Kelly flashed the flag's tassel—mission proof—and stuffed it into her pack. Fhajad secured the ropes to breakaway pins and gave them a sharp tug; lines slithered free and dropped like shed skins, leaving no trail.
We turned, filing into the crawl tunnel that would snake us back to the maintenance lift—footfalls silent, hearts loud only in our own ears.
Behind us, the cavern remained lit, angry, and empty‑handed.
Above us, the way home waited.
2014 Hours, September 11 2525 / Observation Deck, Underground Training Cavern — Reach Military Complex, Planet Reach
CPO Franklin Mendez POV
They looked like ants from up here—ants that could bench‑press a Warthog.
Halsey stood at the glass with her hands folded behind her back, white lab coat ghosting against the glow‑panels. I kept my arms crossed, eyes on the tactical overlay scrolling down the right‑hand holoframe: instructor vitals, bunker comm‑chatter, turret telemetry, all green when the trial started.
"Gen‑I suits weren't my first choice," I muttered, watching one instructor lumber along a catwalk as though the armor weighed more than his pride. "But after two throttled spines and a fractured trachea, Command said we either plate them up or send condolence notices daily. Couldn't argue."
Halsey didn't reply, but her gaze tracked every Spartan shadow slipping along the cavern ceiling—predators, not ants. The overhead cameras compensated for low light, and for a moment the screen bloomed white where Kelly clung upside‑down.
"They adapt to every setback," I went on. "First week it was single instructors. Second week we doubled the numbers. Then trip‑wired stun mines." I flicked a finger toward a separate monitor that replayed last month's chaos—Spartans turning mines into improvised chaff grenades. "Nothing sticks. They're learning faster than my staff can invent punishment."
Below, flood‑lights winked out—fourteen at once—plunging the whole cavern into starless black.
I swore under my breath. "Thought we locked the redundant feeds."
Infra‑sweep cut out next, motion grid followed—gone like someone yanked the breakers.
Halsey angled her head, voice calm as ice. "Is this part of the simulation, Chief?"
"No, Doctor," I said, jaw tightening. "They're freelancing." And doing it better than my instructors—or I—had prepped for.
On the main screen only static flickered until secondary security finally rebooted, bringing the world back in harsh white halogen. Floor looked like a scrapyard: two motionless Gen‑I suits, helmet visors shattered; ropes coiled like shed snakes; bunker entrance wide open and every automatic turret spun uselessly to the ceiling.
Med‑staff were already kneeling beside downed instructors, patches out. No fatal vitals—thank whatever saints watched idiots in outdated armor.
Halsey zoomed the feed on a length of hemp dangling from a stalactite. "We didn't issue climbing line."
"No, ma'am," I said, exhaling. "They must've 'procured' it on their evening stroll."
Her lips twitched—half pride, half something sharper. "Ingenious."
I grunted, tapping the console to mark new training parameters none of the Spartans would actually obey.
"Adapt and overcome," I said. "Faster than we can predict."
The med‑icons on my holodisplay finally flipped from red to amber—stable, no evac—so I shut the feed down and turned to Halsey. She was still studying the dangling ropes as though they were equations she hadn't solved yet.
"High Command sent new orders," I said. "Came across my secure channel ten minutes before this exercise kicked off."
Her gaze slid to me—clinical, faintly suspicious. "I presume it's not another obstacle‑course revision."
"Not even close." I pulled the orders onto the glass. OPERATION BIRD CAPTURE blinked in ONI crimson. "They want a live deployment. Real guns. Real stakes."
Her frown carved a micro‑crease between her brows. "Already?"
"ONI thinks it's time the Spartans paid for their upgrades. Colonel Robert Watts—Insurrectionist, former UNSC—has a hideout on the asteroid belt in the Crios system. Keeps hitting our supply lines. High Command wants him bagged, breathing."
"And they're sending children," she said, voice flat.
I shook my head once. "Sending Spartans. Blue Team only—Leonidas, John, Linda, Kelly, Sam, Fred. They're the sharpest knife we've got."
She folded her arms, processing. "Full mission brief?"
"0900 tomorrow, CASTLE briefing theater. Drop ship leaves within forty‑eight hours after approval." I paused. "I've run preliminary readiness checks. They're healthy enough to punch through a hull if we tell them to."
Halsey's gaze drifted back to the floor of the cavern—scattered armor, broken lights, ropes swaying gently in recycled air. "They'll do it," she said, almost to herself. "But each deployment moves them further from what they were."
"Power comes with a cost, Doctor."
She looked at me, and this time I saw it clearly—mother's worry hiding behind scientist's eyes. Miranda back on Reach, seventy‑six lethal offspring right beneath us.
"Very well," she said. "I'll finalize medical clearances tonight."
I nodded. "Briefing's on me. Blue Team will be ready."
Neither of us spoke as the lights in the cavern dimmed for cleanup. The next page of the playbook was written in live ammunition.
And the Spartans were turning it.