0407 Hours, November 7, 2531 / Construction Platform 966A, Station Delphi, Groombridge 34 System
Mission: Investigate Rebel Activity / Disable Non-Retired Shaw-Fujikawa Drive
Leonidas‑151 POV
The stars out here don't twinkle. They burn.
Silent, sharp pinpricks in the black as we drifted away from the UNSC Aegis of Resolute. Her hull was dark—EM quiet, transponder running ghost. She was a new-class stealth prowler, all jagged plates and thermoptics, with a name no rebel scanner would catch twice.
Blue Team had boots—or more accurately, magnets—on metal as we EVA'd across the station's perimeter. Fred, Sam, and Kelly peeled off at vector 9—sweeping the outer hull for signs of defense systems, sentries, or anything that screamed "ambush." There was plenty of ambient power flow on thermal scans, but no visible resistance.
Kurt-051 and I split off, heading for the internal core of Platform 966A—searching for our primary objective: a non-retired Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace Drive, illegally kept active by rebel engineers. A live S‑F drive meant two things: instant relocation or instant implosion.
Neither was good for humanity.
The outer corridors were exposed skeletons—half-finished bulkheads, conduit loops, untethered coolant lines drifting like jellyfish tentacles. I burned short pulses from my EVA pack, slowing as we reached a sealed maintenance port. Kurt cracked the lock with practiced ease, and we drifted inside.
A soft blue glow met us almost instantly.
Cherenkov radiation.
There it was.
Beneath layers of scaffolding and inertial dampeners, in a makeshift containment rig that looked half-welded by salvagers and half-built from UNSC graveyard tech—was the drive. It pulsed blue like a heartbeat, the electric scream of spacetime bending held back by sheer arrogance.
We pressed deeper into the station, guided by the glow of unspent spacetime. Kurt took point, weapons hot. Every ten meters we checked bearings, logged what we could for ONI asset tagging.
Then I noticed it.
Comms went dead.
No response from Fred, Sam, or Kelly. Not even static. Just dead air.
Kurt glanced back, visor flickering a brief acknowledgment.
We were on our own.
And something was wrong.
The Shaw-Fujikawa Drive pulsed again—deeper this time, almost like a groan.
And that's when Kurt's EVA pack failed.
There was no warning. No sputter, no flicker. One moment he was adjusting position over a scaffolded catwalk; the next, his thrusters cut, and he was tumbling backward—arms flailing once before instinct kicked in. His silhouette twisted in the faint blue wash of Cherenkov light, spinning violently, drifting toward open void.
"Kurt—!" I didn't think. I acted.
I slammed my jump kit's throttle to max burn and engaged my EVA pack in a full-forward push, slicing through the corridor like a railgun round. Kurt's figure shrank fast in the black. Too fast.
I pushed harder—beyond safe limits. My suit's temperature spiked. Vents screamed warnings across my HUD.
He was drifting into space, and so was I.
I caught him. Just barely. Left arm locked around his torso, gauntlet clamped into the magplate seam under his shoulder. But by the time I got a grip, I felt the cold flicker of failure in my own pack. Lights redlined.
Then everything died.
Thrusters shut off. Jump kit disabled. Suit gyro override kicked in, but it was too late. No control.
We were adrift.
Above us—below us—everywhere was black. The station was receding, shrinking like an old memory behind us.
My comms flickered on for half a second—"…Leonidas, respond!—Fred, I can't get a lock—Sam, where the hell is—Kelly's trying to—"
Cut out again.
Then it returned, chopped and chaotic:
"…losing both of them—get the ship—bring us in closer—Leonidas is drifting—Kurt's unresponsive—"
I didn't speak. I couldn't. I focused on regulating Kurt's vitals, syncing our suit temps, trying to give the Aegis of Resolute a better beacon. We were two black shapes in a starless grave.
And no one knew how much time we had before the next radiation pulse hit.
The last thing I heard was static.
No words. No signal packets. Just the quiet, grinding silence of failing comms, pierced by the occasional crackle of distorted telemetry struggling to reach us through a cloud of bent spacetime and electromagnetic noise.
And then, nothing.
The Aegis of Resolute was gone from the HUD. Our signal no longer pinged from Blue Team's network. No more position markers. No tactical overlays.
Just me.
And Kurt.
Adrift.
Our suits spun slowly—tethered only by my left arm locked tight around his armor's magplate. The rotation was unsteady. Sluggish. And my orientation was meaningless. Up and down didn't exist anymore.
I tried to stabilize us. Burned a manual correction pulse.
The pack was dead. So was the jump kit.
My chest felt like someone had cinched my ribs in a vice. Breathing grew slower. Not because the oxygen was running low, but because I couldn't feel the urgency anymore. Time wasn't ticking in my head like it usually did.
Kurt hadn't moved. His vitals still pulsed steady through the link. He was unconscious or in neural lock. Either way, he was stable.
That left me.
My fingers tingled. Vision started narrowing. The stars in the Groombridge system began to blur—not because of speed or movement… but because my brain was giving up.
No bearings. No gravity.
No direction.
No hope of a return vector.
And in that moment—suspended in the void, surrounded by the echo of dead light—
I slipped into unconsciousness.
??? Hours, ??? Date / Unknown Medical Facility, Location Classified
Leonidas‑151 POV
Consciousness came back in fragments.
First, the sharp sterile smell. Then, the soft pressure of a biometric bed. The quiet hum of machines monitoring life signs. My hearing stabilized first, followed by the thrum of my own heartbeat pounding softly behind my ears.
My eyes opened.
White ceiling. Pale lighting. Clean. Military.
Not Covenant. Not a rebel chop-shop. Not Resolute.
Unknown.
I tried to move—muscle diagnostics pinged minor nerve damage, nothing critical. MJOLNIR wasn't on me. Just hospital garb and a dull ache radiating from every nerve ending. Across the room, a second bed. Another body.
Kurt.
He was still unconscious, but stable. Chest rising slow, vitals green.
The door slid open with a smooth hiss.
A man stepped through, dressed in standard UNSC Army formal blues. Silver trim. Black gloves. Bald. Cold eyes.
Rank insignia on his collar: Colonel.
And I knew that face. Everyone in ONI did.
Colonel James Ackerson.
He stepped forward with casual purpose, gaze flicking over our biosensors before landing on me. A smile—not friendly, not apologetic. Just... calculated.
"You're awake. Good," he said, voice calm, clipped. "Let me begin by saying, officially, you and Kurt have been listed as MIA."
He gestured vaguely to the room. "You've been gone long enough. Long enough for it to matter to the public narrative. Spartans don't die. Not when the war's on the line."
My jaw tensed. The pain was duller than my rising suspicion. I knew ONI Section III tactics. Knew their handlers. And Ackerson? He was one of their architects.
So this wasn't a recovery.
This was containment.
He turned to glance at Kurt's still form, just as his fingers tapped on a datapad at his side.
"Kurt's EVA pack malfunction… wasn't a malfunction," he said, as if discussing the weather. "It was planned. Controlled."
He turned back toward me.
"He was being pulled. Quietly. Reassigned."
My stomach sank.
"Spartan-III program," I said flatly.
Ackerson didn't even blink. "Very good. I see Halsey's golden boy is as sharp as she says."
He paced once between us.
"You weren't supposed to be here, Leonidas. This… complicates things. But now that you're here, well…" He gave a small shrug. "You're ours, now. Both of you."
Kurt stirred beside me, slow and groggy at first. Then his breathing leveled and his eyes locked on Ackerson with the same controlled alertness that lived in every Spartan. Whatever sedatives they'd used didn't dull the instinct.
"Welcome back to the world of the living, Kurt," Ackerson said, tone calm, clipped. "You're not in hell. You're in something worse. Bureaucracy."
Kurt sat up straighter. We both knew there was no escape now—not with Ackerson, not with ONI. Not with how deep this rabbit hole already went.
"Let's not waste time," Ackerson continued, voice now switching to operational mode. "You're both assets of strategic value. And I need your cooperation. Not just because it's expected—but because you understand why this matters."
Neither of us responded. That was enough for him to continue.
"We've… made progress. The augmentation process Halsey pioneered, with your help, Leonidas"—he pointed at me—"has allowed us to refine the genetic requirements. The protocols are no longer as restrictive. The cost, physically and logistically, is no longer a bottleneck."
I felt Kurt's posture shift beside me.
Ackerson pressed on.
"The Spartan-III program will be different. Faster. Leaner. Quiet. We won't pull children from random colonies and train them for a decade. We'll take the orphans. The broken. The angry. Survivors from glassed worlds—people who've already lost everything. And we'll turn that hate into a weapon."
I watched his eyes as he said it. There was no malice. Just cold calculus.
Ackerson turned to Kurt. "Do you remember your last name, son?"
Kurt blinked. His face remained stoic, but the hesitation spoke volumes.
"No, sir."
"Then you're Kurt Ambrose now. Congratulations, Captain."
He didn't let the promotion linger before turning to me.
"And you? What about you, Leonidas?"
At first, I opened my mouth and nothing came out. It had been years—decades—since anyone had asked. Since it had mattered.
Then it hit me.
"Grayson," I said. "It used to be Grayson."
Ackerson smiled faintly, more pleased at the record update than the sentiment.
"Well then, Lieutenant Junior Grade Leonidas Grayson, support officer under Captain Ambrose. Congratulations. Both of you have new names, new ranks, and new graves back in the UNSC roster."
He tapped his datapad once.
"Your cover identities are secured. As far as the universe is concerned, you're dead."