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Not As Dead As You Thought2,119 words
Contact2,408 words
Firefights And Talking Horses3,655 words
Introductions3,203 words
Welcome To Canterlot2,333 words

Not As Dead As You Thought

Jorge-052 sat down wearily on an overturned crate, pulling his helmet off and massaging his eyes and temples. He couldn't remember a time where he'd felt more exhausted; it felt as though his many years of war and conflict had had finally caught up with him. Sighing, he looked wistfully at the large device that lay before him, his eyes fixed on a small console. The screen displayed a single word in red, block-lettering: Detonate. Jorge steeled himself, trying to mentally prepare for what was tantamount to suicide. No, he thought to himself. Not suicide. Sacrifice. He was standing in the hangar of a Covenant Corvette, surrounded by the fallen marine boarders that had accompanied him and the corpses of the alien crew that had tried to deny them entry to the ship. The corvette itself was preparing to dock with a gargantuan CSO-class Super Carrier.

The warship was orbiting the planet Reach, one of humanity's best defended strongholds in the galaxy, a veritable fortress of a planet. And this massive war machine threatened to bring Reach to it's knees. Jorge was about to execute a desperate plan to defeat the behemoth, but at great cost. UNSC engineers had rigged a slipspace FTL drive to malfunction if activated, sending anything caught inside the portal's radius to oblivion. The makeshift bomb would be more than enough to destroy the ship, but it's timer mechanism had been damaged during the boarding of the Corvette. Leaving only one choice... the Spartan thought solemnly. The bomb had to be manually detonated. He had volunteered for it, not giving his squadmate Noble 6 any options. He loved his planet, and he could think of no better way to die than to die protecting her from a dreadnought full of murderous alien monsters.

After sending the newest member of Noble team plummeting back down to the planet below, Jorge found himself in his current state, staring at the devastating weapon he now had to employ against his enemy. A terrible, wrenching dread had set in his gut, tearing at his resolve. I'm going to die, he lamented. Not suddenly, not surprisingly, not a random moment in the chaos of battle. Deliberately. Planned. Intentionally. An unwanted feeling flowed through him, an alien feeling, something he had not truly experienced for years: fear. Cold, paralyzing fear. He had been trained to control his fear, use it to keep himself alive, and prevent it from controlling him during battle. But now here he was, unable to use his fear to escape some form of danger, for escape was not his intent.

He was walking willingly into the waiting arms of death, and it terrified him like he hadn't felt since his first days of Spartan training as a child. He thought back to these earliest of days, the absolute farthest he could remember, training with his fellow Spartans-to-be. Fighting, suffering, triumphing alongside people who would become more than just his teammates, more than even friends; nobody could ever know a Spartan like another Spartan could. To each one, their team was the closest thing to a family they would ever have. This thought brought Jorge's mind jarringly back to the present. My family... Jorge thought, looking through the gaping hangars to the planet below, watching as it's surface was bombarded from the orbiting super carrier, flashes of sickening orange bursting into existence, covering miles upon miles of land with each detonation. His Spartans were down there. Fighting. Dying. And he wasn't doing anything to help them. A wave of guilt hit him like a physical blow. How selfish could he be? What was his life compared to the planet full of his kin below? A tremor rippled through his body as anger and embarrassment coursed through him.

His head snapped back to the Slipspace bomb before him before glancing down at the helmet in his hands. The burnt gold visor stared impassively back at him. Twirling it in his hands, Jorge slammed the helmet back down on his head, sealing it to his armor.

"You're a Spartan," he growled to himself. "Act like one." With that, he leapt forward off of the crate he had been sitting on, crossing the distance to the bomb instantly. As he reached it, his hand came up to the console, hovering above the word "detonate". The fear was stronger than ever now, his self-preservation instincts screaming at him to take his hand away, to run, to live. He didn't want this to be the end. He didn't want to die. His hand wavered for a moment. But then he remembered something. Something that had started out just to keep morale up, but had ultimately evolved into a mindset, a way of life for Jorge and his brethren. Something he and every other Spartan who had ever lived had been taught, been imprinted with, this idea ground into their very identity to create the ultimate killing machines that they were. "Spartans never die," he whispered, and tapped "detonate."

***

The massive, imposing form of the Covenant CSO-class Super Carrier Long Night of Solace hung over Reach like a vast and invincible obelisk. It's batteries of plasma torpedo launchers were spitting out a torrential downpour of roiling death at the hapless planet, whose orbital defenses had already been wiped out in that sector, preventing the UNSC armada surrounding the planet from launching an effective counter offensive. To add to the intimidating scene, swarms of smaller support ships circled it in a protective cloud. Squadrons of fighters and interceptors, a handful of battlecruisers, and a small fleet of corvettes scurried around the carrier like a hive of bees guarding their queen. The invincible capital ship in return supplied the smaller craft with troops, munitions, food, and fuel, keeping the invasion force progressing steadily.

In the belly of the monstrous warship, one of it's corvettes pulled in, docking for a refueling run. As it approached, traffic officers aboard the Long Night of Solace hailed it in order to guide it to the appropriate dock. However, to the surprise of the controllers, there was no answer. As the smaller ship prepared to dock, concern grew to full-on panic, and the traffic controllers prepared to give the order to fire. But in that instant, a prick of light formed in the center of the corvette, expanding outward into a gigantic globule of light and completely encompassed the middle third of the ship. As quickly as it had come, it had gone...but as it receded, the space where the ship had been was empty. The other two thirds of the ship fell away from each other, spewing debris. The devastating Covenant warship was destroyed, and Reach was -for the moment- safe.

***

Jorge's vision was temporarily blinded as what appeared to be a star burst to life in front of him. His visor responded, automatically kicking up polarization to 100%, blocking out the light. Already disoriented by his lack of sight, Jorge lifted off of the deck, apparently no longer in the grip of the ship's artificial gravity. He floated wildly upward, far too violently for a simple loss of gravity, slamming into the ceiling. He heard an alarm inside his helmet as his shields absorbed the impact, and flailed his arms, trying to grab anything with which he could anchor and stabilize himself. Thinking quickly, he activated the mag strips in his boots, and slammed his feet into the first surface he felt.

With a pair of satisfying clangs, his boots anchored themselves to a large metallic object. He could tell that whatever he had attached himself to was not anchored, but it was better than tumbling around on his own. Gradually, Jorge's eyesight returned, the bright, blinding afterimages slowly fading, replaced by a sickening, spiraling view of the hangar. Equipment, weapons, containers and bodies flew about, crashing into each other with frightening regularity. Jorge had attached himself to a large Covenant weapons container, which was tumbling dangerously. With a crash, the container collided with something that he couldn't see, and its momentum changed, reversing and slowing down.

Thankful for the slight reprieve, the Spartan tried to use this as a chance to get his bearings and formulate a plan. He glanced around the hangar, looking for anything that could help him, but his attention quickly became focused on the view outside the hangar: instead of the speckled ink of space, he saw brilliant blue skies and fluffy white clouds shooting upwards at an alarming speed. It then dawned on Jorge that the artificial gravity was working just fine; the ship was falling into a planet's atmosphere.

What is going on? Jorge wondered incredulously. Am I still on Reach? Determined to get a better view, Jorge waited until his container had oriented itself in the optimum position, and launched himself off of it with a push from his powerful legs. He flew towards the ceiling, and flipped around to land feet first. Locking to the surface, he sprinted to the lip of the hangar, glancing downward. A vast expanse of land was visible below, lush and verdant, though completely foreign to Jorge. He didn't recognize a single landmark. As confused as he was, he knew he would have to worry about that later. With another push, he launched himself towards the massive pelican dropship tumbling around the hangar bay. He smacked into its hull, his shields once again dipping in strength as they absorbed the impact. Like a gigantic metal monkey, he nimbly climbed to the aft end of the craft, swinging into the open door. He looked in the gear lockers, pulling out a large metal case.

"Gotcha," he said, opening the emergency re-entry kit. After strapping on the thruster and heat shield, he crawled out from the back of the Pelican, and oriented himself, preparing for another jump. As the dropship rotated, he was presented with a view of the open hangar doors. At the sight of the bright blue sky, Jorge pushed off against the hull, propelling himself forward through the hangar doorway and out of the ship. The ground rushed up to meet him much faster than he had been expecting; in the time it had taken him to prepare for his jump, the ship had fallen from the upper atmosphere to what looked to be just over 1000 feet. Jorge immediately activated his thrusters, propelling himself away from the falling shipwreck, lest he be crushed by the mass of metal. Even with two thirds of the ship gone, the chunk of starship was still gigantic. He allowed himself to free fall long enough to get out from under the super carrier, then reoriented his thrusters downwards to slow his descent. As the carrier passed him, Jorge examined it to appraise his handiwork. He looked with satisfaction at the two sheared ends of the ship, each spewing debris as it fell. Target eliminated he thought with no small amount of pride. However, he quickly turned his thoughts to the rapidly approaching ground. Even with his thrusters, it was going to be a rough landing.

The land below looked to be some sort of jungle or forest, with a large river flowing past down from a nearby mountain. It was this mountain that the super carrier careened into, his auditory senses being assaulted by the booming thunder of shattering rock and the earsplitting shriek of shearing metal. The Long Night of Solace's super structure crumpled itself against the mountain, blue bursts of plasma bursting from the fractures in her hull. Jorge doubted very much that he would have survived such an impact, and was thankful for having escaped the doomed vessel, albeit very narrowly. But now he had a different problem to deal with: his own landing.

Shifting his body, he tried to adjust his path to land nearer to the carrier. Though there was certainly a risk of Covenant survivors, he wasn't about to explore this strange land unarmed, and was certain he would be able to scavenge some weapons. He made sure to relax his body as he approached the ground to avoid muscle damage. He crashed through the the forest canopy, snapping through branches and vines as he plummeted the last few feet to the surface, the sound of the rushing wind muted by his helmet's sound filters. Jorge saw the green and brown ground rushing up to meet him, squeezed his eyes shut, and promptly lost consciousness as he crashed into the dirt at over 100 kilometers an hour.

Author's Note:

Brand new to the site, first MLP fic, but I've been writing fics for a while. Anyways, hope you enjoy! :)

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