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Sargent Major Avery Johnson sighed as he looked down on a legend. Master Chief, SPARTAN-117, lay in a crater before him, armor locked from the impact of a 2 kilometer drop off of a Covenant-Forerunner Ship into the deep African jungle.
The black under armor on his torso was ripped on the left side, dry blood caked around its edges. His right shoulder had a 6 inch piece of wood lodged between the shoulder and chest plates.
“Foreman?” he addressed the man kneeling next to him with a handheld computer linked to the MIJOLNIR armor’s interface, reading a real-time schematic of the armor and the man inside.
“His armors locked up, gel layer could have taken most of the impact” the corporal said with a frown.
Johnson knelt down and removed the AI core from the base of the Spartan’s neck, only to find it empty.
Cortana’s not here, he thought.
“That’s odd..” Foreman said under his breath.
“What?” Johnson looked back to see him squinting at the little screen balanced precariously on his knee as he typed away furiously.
“The signal is coming through, I’m getting full readouts on the armor, but there’s nothing on the Chief, no vitals, temperature, breathing, nothing. There can’t be just, nothing.”
Johnson looked at the prone figure before him, then at the surrounding jungle. Crazy bastard. He shook his head and sighed, a shadow of a smile forming.
Pulling out his trade mark Sweet-Williams cigar, relighting it, and placing it in his mouth, he watched the rest of the squad surrounding them searching the forest for any signs of hostiles, a thought forming in his head.
“Radio for extraction. Heavy lift gear. We’re not leaving him here.”
“Yea,” said a deep voice behind him, “you’re not.”
Seven guns snapped into firing position aimed at the emerging figure.
“There are three ways to react to a person,” the figure said, slowly walking forward. “If they are your superior officer, you obey them. If they are an ally, you help them. If they are a threat, you neutralize them. I had to make sure.”
The figure emerging from the depths of the trees in front of Johnson was easily the tallest man he had ever seen, standing at near 7ft tall of rock solid muscle. He moved, gracefully despite his size, to the edge of the brush and paused. The man wore a black, skin tight suit that outlined each and every of his muscles, all tense and ready to react.
His face still in the shadows, he watched them cautiously, waiting for the Helljumpers to make a move. When they didn’t, he stepped into the light, and Johnson was surprised to see the figure’s bare feet. His left hand held his side, blood still oozing from between his fingers. His right shoulder was also caked with blood, but had some kind of mud paste that had stopped the bleeding covering it.
Then Johnson saw the man’s face, and was taken aback by the intensity in his eyes as he stared at them. Their icy blue held a steadiness, even in the face of obvious pain and danger, which only decades of fighting could teach a man.
Those heavy eyes flashed with pain for a moment, causing Johnson to look and see another wave of blood seep through the man’s fingers, and then were steady once more.
“Crazy fool!” Johnson shouted, surprising his men. The man remained unmoved. “Why do you always jump?! One of these days, you’re going to land on something as stubborn as you are.” Johnson strode up to the man and jabbed him in his chest “And I don’t do bits and pieces.”
The slightest lift at the corner of the Master Chief SPARTAN-117’s mouth, indiscernible to the marines surrounding them, but Johnson smiled back.
“Still, you’ve lost way too much blood,” said Johnson, reaching into his med pack.
The Chief said nothing but actually winced and leaned against a tree for support, which really made Johnson worry. No way had the Chief ever shown any actual discomfort, even though Johnson had never seen him without his armor before.
His legs finally gave out and he slid down the tree into a sitting position, leaving a trail of blood on the bark.
Johnson quickly knelt next to the him, pulling out his bio-foam, “where is she, Chief?” he said quietly. “Where’s Cortana?”
The Spartan closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree, still aware of the 5 other sets of eyes on him.
“She stayed behind.” His gaze shifted over to the MJOLNIR armor, gleaming green in the dim sun filtering through the canopy.
“Chief?”
The Spartan took the syringe of bio-foam, and injected it into his torso. It felt like a thousand ants were crawling in and around his stomach as the foam filled the injury and expanded to stop the bleeding. Then they wrapped a bandage around it to keep it clean and hopefully from reopening. Repeating the same process with his shoulder, Johnson said quietly;
“I guess I never have seen your face.”
“Few have,” he said with a slight shrug.
As the sun sets beyond the trees they decide to make camp there for the night, the extraction call never went through. They were too deep in the jungle for the small hastily set up HQ radio to reach them. Tomorrow they would set out on foot to reach a point where they would be able to make contact.
The waiting drove John crazy, especially because he knew it was because of him. Johnson insisted that he rest, that he was lucky to be alive with that fall on top of the multiple internal injuries sustained from days of fighting on the Halo rings.
Just days…
Still, John couldn’t stand being this exposed. In the middle of an unknown area with unknown hostiles, forced to just sit and wait.
Spartans don’t wait.
He sat against another tree, this one in a slightly more secluded portion of the clearing he created when he fell from Truth’s ship. The panel that he used as a shield during his descent sunk deep in its own crater about 20 meters away.
The marines had built a small fire under a slight outcrop or rock on the north side of the clearing, trying to fend off some of the cool, dank humidity that settled in with the night, but in such a way that it would not be spotted from a distance.
John watched them from the darkness, looking to the south, his right, where the night watch was posted, hidden in the foliage. John could easily pick him out in the darkness with his enhanced sight, but they didn’t need to know that. As long as nothing else in this jungle had vision as good as his.
The wind brushed up against his neck and he shivered. He hadn’t been this exposed in years. Not since he and his fellow Spartans were given their armor, 27 years ago. He had barely spent any time outside of it since. It was too exposed, to open, the cool air so different from the comfort of his suit.
Johnson approached the Chief and handed him a compact food ration bar that all UNSC marines carried with them. What little remained of the Chief’s had melted on the ride to the surface.
“You okay?” Johnson asked, taking a seat next to the Spartan.
“Fine,” it was always so easy to talk to Johnson, his brusque yet openly cheerful personality contagious to anyone around him, even the Chief. But John would never tell him what was bothering him, it wasn’t in his nature.
“You know the guys didn’t believe that you were him.” Johnson took a bite of his own CFR and looked across the clearing to the unmoved armor. It almost seemed to glow in the moonlight, inhuman and cold.
The Chief didn’t say anything, his food bar forgotten in his hand that lay on his crossed legs. He was used to people thinking of him as a machine. It never mattered, as long as he accomplished the mission. It never mattered what others thought or what they saw, he didn’t pay attention anyway. He remembered the campaigns when the Spartans first went public, pictures of them in every news article, tall and strong, symbols of man’s power and might against the Covenant.
What about now?
John looks up at the stars. He would never tell Johnson this, but he feels as though he had lost that strength and power with his suit. Even if it is only temporary, outside of his suit, he is just a man. Just a tired, tired man. Exposed. Raw. Open to anyone and anything that could come at him.
“It’s going to be fine, Chief,” Johnson said steadily. He didn’t need the Chief to tell him what had that tense, anxious look on his face.
John looked at the Sargent, steady as a rock, even as exposed as he was. Johnson didn’t need armor in order to believe in himself. Johnson had kept himself and his teammates alive just fine by himself. John laughed and looked back to the stars.
Who’s the super soldier, now?