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The Horde by Awesomedudeman
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The Horde: Prologue
Date: 3 October 2003, 5:51 PM
Prologue
Karr'ussh was angry. His seasoned Elite squad was being used to train new human marines.
'This is absolutely mind boggling,' he thought to himself, ' Covenant Elites training human marines, instead of annihilating them on the battlefield.'
"Brtrudfh kdsssssh iutynr ", he said aloud.
" What'd you say, chief?", one of the marine recruits asked.
"In the mongrel tongue that you speak, I believe it translates to 'What is the galaxy coming to' ", he replied acidly.
"Jeez, chief, sorry. But i'll tell you what it's coming to, and the answer is shit, man, shit. Covies and humans, banding together to fight the oncoming horde. Really, our only hope is if they finish all those top secret projects that they're doin' right now, or we're screwed, and you too, pal, so you can get off yer high horse", the marine snapped back.
"What projects? I know of no progress on my world..."
"Well, for your information, you covies aren't the only ones that can create scientific breakthroughs. Here on Earth, and on Reach II, they're working on a whole new series of developments for the Spartans, and for us marines-"
"Do you mean the same soldier class that effortlessly wiped out my entire battalion?"
"Oh, sorry, I didn't know you were in the final assault on Earth, when they unveiled our new Spartan Corps and Home Fleet. I heard you lost somewhere in the ballpark of 8,000,000 of your Elites. That hurts. My squad was wiped out in the assault on Mars. We didn't have a chance. The rest of my battalion and a handful of old relics of starcruisers were stationed on Mars then. Your banshees alone equaled the total forces on Mars. I'm not really a recruit, but all marines are getting put through training with Covenant units, and vice versa."
" You misunderstand, my troops were wiped out not by a unit, but a single Spartan-II, with standard issue human weapons, before you even improved them the first time. I was on the 'Truth and Reconciliation', on the first Halo."
"Damn... So many lives wasted, and we were just playing into the hands of the Horde by killing each other off. It's a miracle that the Master Chief's Longsword's hyperdrive system screwed up and put him right in the middle of the Horde's fleet. Can you believe that this whole time, when we were fighting each other, they had your Prophets under control, keeping us fighting each other, and keeping our attention away from the other side of the galaxy, where they had been readying their strike fleet for a century. But no matter how much they research our armies, they won't find out about our Spartan-XIX upgrades..."
"What are the nature of these upgrades?" Karr'ussh asked, puzzled.
"Well, for starter's, they're upgrading the shields to rival those of a heavy cruiser, and armor to rival a hunter's, and that's not even mentioning the armaments that they've been developing. They've developed a new form of energy particle, called the positron. It's four million times more powerful than your plasma weapons, and recharges itself, so it never needs a new power core.
"It's actually fortunate that you invaded when you did, before these new generation upgrades came out, otherwise, the casualties would've been in the billions, and then we probably would have gone for your systems."
" Yes, and we wouldn't have been able to defend them, but we would have tried fanatically. I believe you call it 'fighting to the last man', just trying to inflict as many deaths as possible before our race was eradicated... This is confidential, but we had over a trillion hunters and Honor Guard Commander Elites on our Homeworld. The Prophets had selected me to become an Honor Guard Elite, until my troops were obliterated under my leadership, and myself badly hurt. To them, it was an insult to even be hurt by humans, and so I was demoted and sent to be in the first wave assault on Earth, almost a sure death. I was extremely bitter about this, but fortunately, my ship was hit in a raid by your cruisers, and we missed the invasion, so I was sent to one of the moons of Jupiter instead. There, my bad luck continued, as my troops were decimated by a surprise attack of an unknown race living in the gas planet's upper atmosphere, some sort of organic flying fighter, that spews acid. Again, I was demoted for defeat at the hands of a lesser race, and given control of a grunt squadron of reservists, thrown in haphazardly to try at a last ditch effort in the urban combat on Earth. My losses were very light, as both sides' front line troops had been annihilated in the war of attrition that this had become. But then your Spartans showed up again and I was captured, and the grunts were executed. I have been told that for every Elite killed, 5 were captured. I would have liked to see the High Prophet's face when the Head Commander told him that bit of information, that his prize troops, the pride of the Covenant, had surrendered in such large numbers that a whole planet was set aside for them, to the supposedly inferior race, humanity. However, I am surprised that the citizens rebelled against the military forces, and threw us off of our own worlds, homeless in the universe. They have probably been eradicated by some of the militant worlds, constantly rebelling against our religious rule. There were actually some potent military worlds under our control, kept in line only by threat of genocide."
"I bet you miss your homeworld. I do."
"But we did not conquer Earth, surely you must still have your world..."
"My homeworld was Chi Cheti IV, one of the first systems to be invaded. What eventually happened to the inhabitants after you conquered it? Where they enslaved, or just executed?"
"Worse. It's inhabitants were used as test subjects for new weapons development. We tested all the plasma weapons on them to learn where the kill shots were located, what would disable, and what would kill slowly. Others were used to try and crossbreed our races with yours. I know this because I was ordered to be a supervisor on this planet. At that time, we were filled with religious zeal and hatred for humans, and we enjoyed killing them. Then you started to fight back, and we started to lose battles, and we started asking questions. An entire world's population, including it's military garrison rebelled, and the entire Templar of Honor Guard Elites had to be sent to put it down, with heavy loss of troops, and they still had to garrison another 5,000,000 hunters had to be stationed there to keep the peace. Hunters, if you haven't noticed, are terribly stupid, they live to fight and take orders, so they can't be convinced to the ideology of rebels. But we were internally unstable, and should our dream have come true, to rule the galaxy, our leaders would have had no more crusades to keep us occupied with, that's when the trouble would have started. And you humans would have been in the middle of it. You would then have been the second most powerful force in the galaxy, and someone would have gotten you on their side in the civil wars that would have followed, if your side had lost, you would have become extinct at your enemy's hands, had you won, you would have ruled the galaxy...
Suddenly, a marine sergeant entered the training area.
"Listen up, ladies, I got yer marchin' orders right here. We're to report to Armory V at 1600 hours. That gives you daffodils 4 hours to get your personal gear together. If you got a preferred sidearm, other than what the Corps is issuin', bring that along too, but it has to use standardized ammo, cause in the middle of battle we ain't gonna go on a grocery trip for your ammo. Bring your rifles too, so you can turn 'em in. You grunts get your new weapons and armor to get. You're gonna get armor like the old Spartan VI's had. You guys are gonna kick some ass and take some names, and kick some more ass!"
"AM I RIGHT MARINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Yesir!"
"I SAID, AM I RIGHT MARINES!!!!!!!"
"YESSIR!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And so it begins...................
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