As John and Blue Team made their ways back to the docks, they were surprised by the amount of soldiers rushing to the barrack. They didn't listen to anything deeper than surface level communications, but they still got a vague idea of what was going on.
Dozens of soldiers had entered the barracks where the lights were cut off after getting a panic signal from Colonel Watts' office. Responding to it they found nothing but bodies on the bottom floor from where they had initially inserted, but after that the building was seemingly empty.
Then the teams inside the building went silent, as did the next three, then the screams started. It startled them at first, loud screams blasting from dozens if not hundreds of speakers scattered around by the rebels to coordinate in case of a blackout, and every last one was transmitting horrid screams of pain and panic.
This only expedited their progress to get to the docks to get away from whatever the hell was happening. "Where's Shawn, he hasn't reached us yet." Linda asked bringing up the rear when she jumped as Shawn emerged from the shadows, covered in blood. "Shawn! Are you alright, what's all this blood?!" She asked but he didn't say a word, just falling in line with them as they finally reached the docks.
The docking bay was empty, save for a few workers who were too busy trying to shut off the speakers to pay attention to Blue Team. "There's the pelican, Sam go set the charges." As Same went to do that, John and the others opened the cargo hatch of the pelican and put the crate carrying Colonel Watts inside, securing it safely.
"Shawn, are you injured?" John asked as a dock worker noticed that the pelicans door was open. Shawn shook his head, still saying nothing. "What's all this blood from?" He asked again as Kelly and Linda started up the pelican, now all the dock workers knew something was up as one of them ran over to the panic button on the wall.
Seeing him run, Shawn's helmet snapped towards him and started following him as he got up, ready to strike when Same came back. "Charges are set, we need to leave now, comms are going crazy!" John decided to deal with Shawn later as Sam blew the charges, blasting a hole into the vacuum as John activated a panic button and threw it as hard as he could into the decompressing bay.
Kelly and Linda flew them out just as the emergency doors slammed shut, though it wasn't enough to save the workers who'd been caught and dragged out into space.
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Eventually they made it back to Reach, where several ONI agents were ready to take away the crate carrying Watts. As Blue Team left the pelican, they came face to face with an officer, his uniform identified him as 'Keyes'
As John went to go talk to him, Shawn remained silent, methodically cleaning his blade as Kelly, Linda and Sam wondered what happened for him to have so much blood on his suit. They were worried for their friend but didn't ask anything as John and Keyes finished talking, and Chief Mendez marched over, "Amphitheater, on the double Spartans!"
Shawn didn't get anytime to change to he was quite the oddball amongst the others since he was dark red to the others grey. Mendez and Halsey didn't seem to mind as an older man stepped onto the stage.
The man finished talking to Halsey and Mendez, turning and introduced himself. "I am Vice Admiral Stanforth." Deja pulled up a projection of a planet as the Vice Admiral continued. "This is Harvest, population of 3 million. A peaceful and productive farming world. On February 3rd, at 1423 hours, the Harvest orbital platform made long range radar contact with this object. After that, all contact with Harvest was lost."
A new projection, one that Shawn recognized as a Covenant vessel, the time had come.
Stanforth continued. "Command assembled a battle group. What they found was all that was left of Harvest. Three million lives lost. The colony burnt to ash. Power like humanity has never seen. Then they encountered this. A starship of unknown design. It destroyed the Vostok and the Arabia in under a minute, using highly advanced weapons and impenetrable shielding. The Heracles escaped into slipspace with substantial damage and brought this intel back. They will not negotiate, they will not communicate. They cannot be reasoned or bartered with."
This shocked all the Spartans. For years they'd been training to fight insurrectionists, now they had to fight aliens instead.
"Humanity will fight back. We've already seen that we cannot do it with the blunt instrument of a fleet. We need the surgical precision of a scalpel. The SPARTAN program is that scalpel. We received a message before the attack in UEG base English. Play the message, Beowulf."
A grainy video played as a voice snarled in broken but understandable English. "Humans, your destruction is the will of the gods, and we are their instrument."