Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [62]
As tools of war, the Spartan-IIIs were most often deployed as living fire-and-forget weapons—just point, shoot, and wait for the fireworks. ONI, or on occasion a highly placed UNSC official, passed along a key Covenant target; the IIIs were then sent in, headfirst, to eliminate the given objective, or inflict as much damage as physically possible in the effort. Success meant a handful or more made it back to base, mission complete; failure, nobody came home, but—to a man—they fell doing their damnedest to inflict the maximum level of destruction upon their foe. This all-encompassing sense of service before self in the face of almost certain death hardened them. Connected them. But even among this collection of steadfast soldiers there were a select few with a bond deeper than the others could ever begin to imagine, as these unique IIIs were a secret even to their peers.
AND SOMEWHERE out among the star-poked black of the galaxy, on a nameless moon, far beyond the outermost UNSC colony, Roland and Jonah methodically inched their way through tangled, alien undergrowth, slowly, quietly moving closer to the source of the blip on Jonah’s motion tracker.
TWO
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF HEADHUNTING
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There had been much concern about fielding a sufficient number of Spartans for the missions that were considered essential—deployment against large-scale Covenant targets and defense of key UNSC facilities being chief among them. In a war many were beginning to believe was unwinnable, losing even a handful to specialized operations was frowned upon. This unwillingness to spread the Spartan ranks too thin across the field of battle meant the number of two-man infiltration squads, codenamed: Headhunters, culled from the ranks of the Spartan-III program, was extremely limited. At the program’s height there was a maximum contingent of six squads—six teams, with a total of seventeen soldiers rotating in to fill gaps when half or all of a team was lost in the field. Jonah and Roland were paired as part of an initial eight-man roster and had been together as a unit since.
It was the Headhunters’ task to infiltrate heavily fortified enemy encampments, ships, and operation centers completely undetected, with minimal, mission-specific weaponry, and no radio contact or hope for backup or retrieval, and complete a set series of objectives in preparation for one of two eventualities: a larger, full-scale assault on the target, or as a decoy and distraction for UNSC operations elsewhere.
Over the course of the Human-Covenant War there had been some luck, limited but occasionally fruitful, in stealth insertions behind Covenant lines. The majority of these operations ended in lost contact with the field unit and the presumed death of the operatives involved. The Spartan-II program had changed this to a degree, as the IIs had been able to slip into enemy territory on a number of occasions—not always with the best results, but with results, nonetheless. Now, with the IIIs and the advancements in their training and the technologies and equipment available to them, further and more intrusive campaigns into Covenant-held regions were deemed a necessary risk—although such operations would be attempted on a limited basis, and in direct control of a special unit from deep within Beta-5, one of ONI’s most secretive subdivisions, operating under the umbrella of the clandestine organization known as Section Three.
Spartan-III soldiers selected to participate in the Headhunter program had to meet one exclusive prerequisite before being considered by Beta-5: only those individuals who had survived two or more specially assigned training missions would be evaluated for possible inclusion in its additional, grueling training regimen.