When Destiny Burns, Ep. 1: A Halo and Inheritance Cycle Crossover

Chapter 4. 4 Operator pt. 1

He couldn't decide what to do at the moment just yet. It was wiser to wait for the morning to come and then climb one of the mountainsides, as they were more likely to come out of hiding when the sun was up than in the night.

It was not what he would do, but then again not many people were like him.

'Rest here,' He told the dragon as soon as they reached a place where a few trees had fallen over, forming a natural grove where the reptile could sleep in.

Hunger, the dragon let him know.

'Hurry up,' He replied. The group of humanoids had been heading to the mountains for a reason; they might live there, or they might be migrating to live there. He couldn't take a risk with such creatures around –especially not with his dragon flying about.

The black animal was gone for the better part of the night, during which he constantly held his position. Three to four hours went by like that to the point that the sun slowly started to rise on the horizon, bathing the desert that lay behind him in a red and yellow cloak.

Then he heard the flapping of wings and he turned towards the origin of the sound, waiting for his companion to show itself. After half a minute of waiting, the black shape descended through the cover of the leaves, breaking a dozen branches and twigs in the process. Even though its black mass was more than three meters long, he still expected it to be able to handle that mass.

"Quiet," He told the dragon as it folded its large, bat-like wings. "You make too much noise. You want to stay with me, you learn how to be silent."

The dragon hissed at him indignantly, anger flooding into the Spartan's mind as he felt the extent of its emotions.

"You messed up. We could have snuck past those hostiles, but you alerted them. That won't happen again."

The dragon brought its jaws together with a loud snap and a large cloud of smoke exited its nostrils. With its front legs, it started to claw at the ground in frustration.

Unfair, the dragon let him know. It thought that he couldn't be disappointed with it? Then it would be in for a surprise.

"Practice," He told it and that was final.

A deep, low rumbling originating from the dragon's throat filled the air, but that disappeared as quickly as it had come.

The Spartan and the dragon spent the rest of the day in silence, making their way to the foot of the mountain and then ascending it. By the time the sun had passed its highest spot in the air, the Spartan had just about reached a small platform on the side of the mountain.

The dragon had no problem with flying all the way up to his point, but the wall that the Spartan was climbing was steep and treacherous. Many times he reached for a rock, only for the rock to crumble apart or fall away. At least twice he slid a few meters back down the face of the mountain, only to recover from the fall by digging his hands and feet deep into the rocks.

Of course, he remembered the basics of climbing: always keep three limbs to the wall and use your legs instead of your arms to pump your body up. But climbing more than a hundred meters of solid rock was a hard thing to do when you weighed half a ton.

The dragon constantly buzzed around him, trying to point out rocks that he could grab or paths that he could take. Even though it had been pretty mad with him, the creature still tried to help him, which puzzled the Spartan greatly. Why would it help him when it was upset with him?

After two hours of climbing since he had started, the Spartan had reached the outcropping that he had aimed for. He pulled himself on top of it and got to his feet, very careful as to not misplacing his balance.

When he used the high ground to oversee the place where he was going, he cursed under his breath and clenched his fists.

There was exactly the same valley lying in front of him as the one he had left. No trees, no camps and no villages. Nothing.

He had wasted half the day to get up the mountain only to end up with failure.

Damnit.

Anger? The dragon asked him, flashing a sense of curiosity.

He ignored the animal and lowered his body past the outcropping, preparing to slide all the way back down again. Noise and visibility be damned.

The Spartan and the dragon kept on traveling through the Beor Mountains, spending the rest of the day to get to the foot of the next mountain. Zero-zero-seven continued the trend of letting the dragon rest through the night, but while the dragon would rest in its hideout, the soldier would then always sneak out to scout the surrounding areas. As such, he ascended the next mountain in the night between the seventh and eighth day and finally spotted a village.

But it wasn't the village he had been looking for.

What the Spartan saw was a city of strange architecture, where more than four-hundred individuals had gathered together. He spotted more than a dozen fires where the figures roasted animals and made other kinds of food, but he wasn't yet convinced that this was the group he had been looking for. There was something off...something was wrong.

He hit the magnification on his visor and zoomed in on the area. His MJOLNIR MK VI had been upgraded with quite a few options and functions when compared to the MK V version. The Master Chief had been the lucky one to first wear the suit in combat, right before the Battle of Earth. During the first weeks of combat, the remaining kinks had been worked out of the Mark Six and the Spartans were outfitted with the newest edition. Most of them had been recalled back to Earth to defend mankind's home-world against the incoming Covenant attack.

They had only known of the attack because the Master Chief had been able to hi-jack a Covenant vessel after the events on the first Halo, before intercepting a Covenant message that they were preparing a fleet to invade Sol.

He had read the report of OPERATION: FIRST STRIKE, as called by the surviving SPARTAN-II"s.

The Chief and the few other survivors of Halo had recovered some Spartans from Reach's surface, before they had jumped to the enormous Space-station that the Covenant had been using to refuel their fleet: The Unyielding Hierophant. They sabotaged the station and lured the fleet there, destroying more than five-hundred Covenant vessels once it overloaded.

The Chief and his team had been hailed as heroes and once they had returned to Earth, he had received the first edition of the Mark Six armour.

He remembered how Spartan Operators and normal Spartans had been fighting together to save the Earth, but they could never have met each other. As such, there had been no fighting side by side for them. They all had their missions and assignments and the like, but the younger Spartans couldn't have joined the older ones in combat After all, they weren't supposed to exist.

A damn shame.

A sudden change in the environment brought the Spartan back to his scouting and he took another good look at the large valley. The four-hundred figures had received reinforcement: another two groups, each spanning more than a hundred warriors, had poured into the valley through other entrances. He realized that there were those amongst the groups that stood way taller than the rest, just like the eight-foot tall humanoids he had fought in the desert. They were the same species...the grey-skinned, horned humanoids.

_word count: 1330 words_