John-117/Human-Covenant War

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John-117/Human-Covenant War
2525 2526 2535 2544
Involved conflicts:	Insurrection Human-Covenant War
Dates:	December 3, 2525 - 2544
Location:	Alpha Corvi II, Alpha Corvi system Netherop, Ephyra system Seoba, Biko, Kolaqoa system Etalan, Igdras system Naraka, Buta system Circinius IV, Circinius system

This article details John-117's actions during the Human-Covenant War, up until the end of 2544.

Unrelenting

Main article: Battle of Chi Ceti IV

John-117: "Spartans, this is what we've trained our entire lives to do. If we lose here, we lose everything."

Spartans: "Sir, yes, sir!"

— John reminds the Spartans of just how serious their task is.

John was piloting the Pelican through through the exit burn of its orbital path by 2037 hours, carrying all the Spartans, Halsey, the three technicians from at the Damascus facility, and twelve spare suits of Mjolnir. The UNSC Commonwealth's last known position was ten million kilometers in system from their previous rendezvous point, and it was this to this location that John was taking them. The Covenant ship was three million kilometers from the Commonwealth but closing that distance with every second. John confirmed with Halsey that their armor was usable in vacuum and then asked Sam for a overview of the dropship's weaponry. Sam let him know that the Pelican was equipped with thirty-two HE Anvil-II missiles, so John in turn told him to assemble a team to go EVA and retrieve them from the rocket pods on the craft's wing's. Halsey flatly objected when he asked her permission to attack the Covenant ship, but relented when he explained he meant to board it using thruster packs, not to go up against it with the Pelican. She transferred the bird's controls to herself so John could join the other Spartans in the rear. He motioned the techs to move to the forward cabin and ordered everyone else to grab a thruster pack. Sam handed him one of the warheads and Kelly passed him a pack. Thanks to an adhesive polymer Sam had applied, the missiles would be able to cling to their armor. John went over the plan with his Spartans, emphasizing that their target was the hole the Commonwealth had already put in the ship. He said that if anyone missed then they should power down and wait to be retrieved. John was the one to punch in the code that opened the Pelican's rear hatch and the first one to launch, followed close behind by the others.

Upon boarding the Unrelenting, John thought it noteworthy that the ship was maintaining non-centrifugal artificial gravity. Doing so on human ships at the time consumed an enormous amount of energy, and John and Halsey had previously questioned whether the ship would even still have its shielding up, since they believed the damage done to it by the Commonwealth may have forced it to conserve power as much as possible.

While he rocketed toward the enemy ship at one hundred million kilometers per hour, he thought to contact Halsey to ask if she could have Captain Wallace create a diversion for them. Before long, the Covenant vessel was firing its pulse lasers at inbound Archer missiles. John was able to get his velocity to almost match that of the target by the time he reached it, but when he tried to find a handhold he came up empty due to its hull being covered by an energy shield. Around one hundred meters further along the surface, however, he noticed a pulse laser turret that the shield dropped around in whenever it had to fire. John carefully adjusted his vector and timed his approach so that he was able to slip beneath the shield the next time it dropped around the turret. He pulled himself along the exterior of the ship until he reached the hole that had been blasted into it. Only Kelly and Sam were waiting for him there, and they got no responses when they tried to reach any of the others over COM channels. The three who had made it traversed past multiple levels which the Commonwealth's magnetic accelerator cannon had penetrated, eventually settling on the first deck and moving inward until they approached they had reached the approximate middle of the ship. John and Sam were able to force open a sealed set of sliding pressure doors so the trio could continue down another corridor. John began to repeat the same after reaching another set, but Kelly stopped him and instead opted to try to open them with a nearby button pad. It only took here three attempts at pushing different buttons to make the doors slide open, and the Spartans found themselves face-to-face with a bird-like alien: a Ruuhtian Kig-Yar. A trio of armor-piercing bursts from the Spartans' assault rifles made short work of it.

Kelly picked up a radiation signature coming from deeper in the vessel, so they followed it down a side branch off of another corridor. Kelly opened the next set of doors as she had before while John and Sam took flanking positions on either side. The Kig-Yar on the other side seemed to have known they were coming, as it was ready with an activated point defense gauntlet and fired an overcharged Type-25 plasma pistol as soon as doors opened. John would have been hit by the blast had Sam not shoved him out of the way and caught the full brunt of the weapon himself. Return fire from the Spartans was initially deflected by the alien's shield gauntlet while it continued to shoot and hit Sam, so John charged forward and slammed his foot into the shield, knocking it away. It was then a simple matter for him to jam the barrel of his rifle right into the Kig-Yar's mouth and splatter its blood and bits of bone on the wall behind it. John helped Sam up, who claimed he would be okay, and then policed the Jackal's gauntlet to pass on to Halsey for study. The room they found themselves in overlooked a chamber that held what the Spartans reasoned was either the ship's reactor or some kind of weapons system. A third Kig-Yar sighted them but scrambled for cover rather than engage. At this point, Sam asked for John and Kelly's Anvil warheads and said they ought to simply shoot out the glass which separated them from the next chamber and toss them down into it. John agreed and told him to set their timers so they would explode in three minutes after being armed. He then was forced to regretfully order Sam to remain behind to defend them while he and Kelly escaped, as his armor had been breached and he wouldn't be able to make it back to the Pelican or the Commonwealth. Sam had already known this was to be his fate, but Kelly took some convincing on John's part. He and Sam parted with a clasping of hands, with John squeezing his. He grabbed Kelly's arm when she hesitated to leave and the two of them were soon forcing the nearest set of doors shut behind them. They raced back down the corridors the way they'd came until they were exiting the hole in the hull. They waited for an opportunity when a pulse laser fired and escaped through the gap in the ship's shield just as explosions tore through it behind them. Kelly clung to John as the Covenant vessel was finally torn