Military Calendar September 11, 2525, 0930 Hours
Epsilon Eridani system, UNSC military fortress Reach, Reach
Halsey leaned back in the chair in Mendez’s office, her legs propped up on his desk.
The chair tilted back precariously, on the verge of tipping over at any moment.
She held a cigar pinched from Mendez’s desk, about to light it.
The air in the office was thick with the faint scent of machine oil and the aroma of coffee.
Mendez’s desk was piled high with documents, and in the corner stood a holographic picture frame featuring a photo of him in dress uniform from his younger days.
A few medals hung on the wall, gleaming softly under the fluorescent lights.
The door opened.
“I didn’t know you were coming today, Doctor,” Mendez said, standing in the doorway with a mug of coffee in hand, a hint of surprise in his voice.
His eyes fell on the expensive leather chair cushion beneath Halsey’s feet—a personal item he had used since boot camp—but he said nothing.
“I wanted to see the Spartans,” Halsey murmured around the cigar shoved into her mouth.
She made no move to get up.
“Where are they?”
“They aren’t training here anymore.” Mendez rounded the desk and set his coffee down.
He didn’t try to reclaim his chair, merely standing beside the desk.
“They’re somewhere else now.”
“Somewhere else?”
“Underground, Doctor.” Mendez walked toward the door.
“Want to take a look?”
Halsey lowered her feet, stood up, and followed him.
Her high heels clicked crisply against the metal floor, sounding like a countdown timer.
“What do you want to show me?”
Mendez didn’t answer, simply pushing open the office door and heading straight toward the pad.
Outside, it was cold.
Reach’s air was thin and dry, making every breath feel like swallowing sandpaper.
Halsey wrapped her coat tightly around herself as she followed Mendez into a Warthog scout vehicle.
Stars dotted the night sky, but they seemed far away—so distant they felt like part of another universe.
Mendez sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine.
The Warthog gave a low roar, its chassis vibrating slightly.
“There’s an abandoned titanium mine underneath this area,” Mendez said as he drove, twin shafts of light cutting through the mountain road from the headlights.
“The UNSC hollowed it out thirty years ago. Now it’s been converted into a training facility.”
“A mine pit?”
“Yes, Doctor.” Mendez turned the wheel, steering onto a steeper path.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires, but he kept the vehicle steady.
“We built a simulated battlefield inside.
And…” He paused, seeming to weigh his words, “…some special equipment.”
“Special equipment?”
“A test version of the Mark I armor,” Mendez said.
“It’s still being refined, but it’s combat-ready.”
Halsey frowned.
Mark I armor was the powered exosuit developed specifically for the Spartan program.
A prototype had appeared two years ago, but they had never solved the issues with the power system and human strain.
Three trainers had died accidentally during testing—a piece of classified intelligence the UNSC preferred to keep quiet.
“You put the instructors in them?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Mendez said grimly.
“The instructors wear them for force-on-force training. The Mark I armor enhances a normal soldier’s reaction time and strength to seventy percent of a Spartan’s.” He paused.
“Though there were some accidents.”
“You already know.” Mendez’s voice held no question, only a statement.
“I am the director of the Spartan program, Chief Petty Officer Mendez,” Halsey said coldly.
“There is nothing I do not know.”
“Then you should also know,” Mendez continued, “that we upgraded the safety systems afterward. Now the instructors perform exercises in the updated suits.”
Halsey fell silent.
Of course she knew.
She was the one who had approved the modifications, and she was the one who had signed the non-disclosure order.
No one would ever know how those three instructors died.
“How much farther?”
“Nearly there,” Mendez said.
Minutes later, the Warthog drove into a dark tunnel.
Mendez turned on the headlights, beams dancing off the rough rock walls.
The tunnel was long, filling the air with the smell of damp earth and rusted metal.
Faded mine shaft markers from thirty years prior were visible on the walls from time to time.
Then, light appeared at the end of the tunnel.
Halsey saw a massive subterranean dome.
Floodlights shone down from every angle, illuminating the entire space as bright as day.
The rock walls of the dome had been artificially reinforced, lined with metal struts and ventilation ducts.
In the center of the cavern sat a concrete platform, roughly thirty meters square.
Surrounding the platform was bottomless darkness; anything falling off would vanish without a trace.
Halsey could see scorch marks near the edges—leftover scars from past exercises.
Mendez parked the Warthog on a metal platform and stepped out.
“Follow me.”
He led Halsey toward an observation room.
The exterior of the room was a transparent glass wall filled inside with monitors and displays.
The opposite side overlooked the entire cavern.
From this perspective, the floodlights looked like suspended stars in the sky.
Mendez pressed a button on the wall.
The observation room began to rise.
Halsey grabbed the wall to steady herself.
Through the glass, she saw the cavern floor receding.
The floodlights turned into clusters of blurry pinpricks of light, and the concrete platform below looked like a miniature battlefield model.
At twenty meters up, everything felt small and surreal.
After ascending roughly twenty meters, Mendez pressed the stop button.
The observation room came to a steady halt in midair, overlooking the platform below.
“Lights,” he said.
The searchlights snapped on instantly.
The concrete platform was fully exposed.
Nine instructors stood on it, clad in dark green Mark I armor.
The armor looked bulky and crude, almost pieced together as a makeshift assembly.
Thick metal plating covered their torsos and limbs, and complex sensor arrays were embedded in their helmets.
But Halsey knew that the power beneath that armor was lethal enough to kill a normal human.
Each instructor held a massive rifle—specially modified variants with lengthened barrels and expanded magazine capacities, firing thirty-millimeter stun rounds that could knock an adult unconscious in half a second.
They resembled autocannons more than rifles.
A flagpole stood in the center of the platform, bearing a red flag at its top.
The flag looked glaringly harsh under the light of the searchlights, like a drop of congealed blood.
“Capture the flag?” Halsey asked.
“Yes, Doctor,” Mendez stood beside her, a subtle hint of pride in his voice.
“This is the Spartans’ final exam.”
“Final exam,” Halsey repeated.
“Fighting against these men?”
“The instructors are equipped with the test version of the Mark I armor,” Mendez explained.
“Top speed thirty-two kilometers per hour, capable of lifting two tons. They’re using thirty-millimeter stun rounds with automated targeting systems.”
He pointed to his temple.
“Plus motion trackers and infrared scopes. They have three-hundred-and-sixty-degree coverage; no movement escapes them.”
“Taking down armor like that,” Halsey murmured calmly, her eyes fixed on the suited instructors, “would take at least two or three platoons of Marines.”
“Yes, Doctor,” Mendez said.
“That’s why I wanted you to see this with your own eyes.”
He turned to the console and pressed the comm button.
“Commence exercise.”
The instant the words left Mendez’s mouth, every searchlight on the platform went black.
The cavern plummeted into darkness.
Only the faint illumination from the observation room’s glass wall remained.
But it was far too dim for Halsey to make out what was happening below.
She could only see the instructors’ suits—faint indicator lights embedded in their dark metal shells, blinking like a cluster of eyes in the dark.
Then, numbers flickered onto the monitors.
The first minute elapsed.
Then the second.
Nothing happened.
The instructors held their rifles, scanning their surroundings vigilantly.
Their motion trackers swept continuously through the dark, ready to sound an alarm at the slightest movement.
Yet the platform was deserted.
The red flag swayed gently in the windless cavern, seemingly mocking the useless force arrayed below.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Nothing.
Halsey almost assumed the exercise had been called off.
The steady, measured breathing of the instructors came through the comm channel.
They knew the Spartans were coming; they just didn’t know when.
Just then, she saw it.
In the shadows at the absolute edge of the platform, a barely discernible silhouette emerged.
A shadow—no, not a normal human shadow.
The outline was too lean, too fluid, like a panther lurking in the dark.
Tucker.
Halsey recognized the silhouette.
She had seen the young man train; his movements differed from the other Spartans.
John was like a bull, charging straight ahead; Tucker was like a snake, silent and soundless.
He never attacked head-on, preferring to approach targets from the flank or rear.
One of the instructors spotted the shadow as well.
“Over there!” the instructor yelled, bringing up his rifle to fire.
Thirty-millimeter stun rounds spewed sheets of flame, creating a wall of lead where Tucker had stood.
Muzzle flashes illuminated half the platform, lighting up the tense faces inside the armor.
But the spot was already empty.
Halsey’s pupils contracted slightly.
The instructors were using automated targeting systems—ones capable of locking onto and tracking moving targets within 0.3 seconds.
But Tucker was too fast.
His movement speed exceeded the operational limit of the targeting system.