Halopone briefer

SII (Silber Team) Nim-617 (UNSC NSW 715X SO)
SIII (Beta Company, Khopesh Team) Nim-B812 (UNSC ASOF 180E)

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Petty Officer First Class Nim-617 was having a rough go of it.

Beneath her hooves, the blue-purple nanolaminate floor of the docking station rumbled furiously, as six-hundred pounds of angry augmented mare and metal roared over it like the great freight trains of Earth and Mars, each hoofbeat delivering tens of thousands of newtons of force as she drove forward, faster than any unenlisted sprinter of Ponykind's homeworld ever had. Mentally keying several commands to the software of her MJOLNIR, the FARNDALE targeting pod on her helmet added several dozens of times of magnification to a small part of her vision, projecting what she had ordered it focused on to her helmet's VISR and giving her a laser-measured range-estimate. 800 meters and closing on the hull of the CCS-pattern Covenant Battlecruiser she had to board. The rest of Silber-Team had been forced to break away from her to establish a defense against the Brute and Jackal QRF that had intercepted them on the dockyard, and in the chaos, only Nim had been able to split to break through to pursue the Cruiser on which the team's AI had inadvertently trapped itself aboard.

Cole Protocol was clear. The AI was to be either recovered or destroyed immediately, at any cost, and unfortunately, "any" included a lone Spartan-II, unassisted in her viscous, undefended sprint to board a two-kilometer long starship on its' way to leave her in its dust. Were she a simple marine, like the beloved "little ones" she had staked her life to protect so many times, she would be terrified at her prospect against such a superior force. But Nim was a Spartan. The bulwark against the hordes of the Covenant broke, the bulkhead that protected ponykind from the alien fiends. She was a tool, and like any other tool, she would one day break from the constant overuse and abuse of her body, mind, and spirit, and when she broke, she would never be buried or mourned, only replaced. But until that day, she served, and served to the fullest extent. And so, she had plunged into the fight, unprotected, unsupported, and unafraid. If she died, she died, but if she failed, then untold millions faced the same fate in turn. In moments like this, it served her well to remind herself.

600 meters. Close enough to reach out and touch. She did a mental inventory check on what she had. Nine magazines of 7.62x51mm M118 FMJ-AP, each one of the newer 36-round capacity magazines, plus one in her MA5C rifle, ten magazines of .50 caliber M225 SAP-HE, plus one in the M6G on her flank, a trauma kit on the other flank, an M1 Combat Knife, a tacpad, 4 M9 Fragmentation Grenades, 2 commandeered Type-1 Plasma Grenades, and 2 bricks of Comp-12 plus a pack of blasting caps. Everything she wanted for. Except Silber's AI. To be frank, however, she didn't so much "want for" as "desperately need" Hrotti.

200 meters. Spitting distance. She continued to thunder forward, ignoring the noises around her and only watching the ship ahead of her as it prepared for launch. That was until it wasn't "preparing." The cruiser shuddered, and with a thunderous rumble beneath her hooves, it was clear that it was now *launching.* The fur on the back of Nim's neck bristled. Sucking in a deep breath of the filtered air, she steeled herself and focused entirely on pushing the absolute limit of her sprint.

150 meters. The docking systems of the ship had totally disengaged, and now Nim was out of time. And of course. Another Brute-led QRF had just moved in her way. Led by a Chieftan, roaring as he brandished his hammer, of course. Nim had no time for this, she wasn't going to stick around to finish any survivors. Releasing her off-hoof's grip on the rifle's forend, she reached into her chestpiece's GP pouch, withdrawing a Type-1 Plasma Grenade. Squeezing it momentarily, she felt the internal mechanism undergo its' intended priming, igniting the 3 second fuse to total containment failure. At the same time, she raised her rifle, cocked into her hip at the same time as she moved midstride. Her VISR's link to the internal targeting software of the rifle helped her guide her muzzle to a red-clad Grunt, the snivling psuedoarthropod leading the pack in a frantic waddle. Nim squeezed the trigger, sending a burst into the grunt's exoskeleton and low-thickness nanolaminate, splattering azure ichor all over his brothers, but more importantly, bursting his pressurized breathing tank. The grunt didn't even have time to scream in agony, or gurgle on the blood filling its' lungs alongside an unbreathable gas-mixture, before all 200 pounds of its' relatively weak frame was skyrocketed towards the luminous ceiling of the docking bay, a trail of viscera, methane, and blood following it. At the same time, Nim pitched the Type-1 at the leading Brute. Her attack had been little more than a distraction to disorient the rest of the Covvie QRF and blind them to her immediate assault on the team's lead, and a wildly successful one at that.

Before the Chieftan's vision cleared, he felt a weight thump against his forearm, sticking there as an electric whine pitched in his ears. Seeing it before he felt the searing agony, he screamed, less in fear and more in brutal rage as the Holy Light filled his eyes. And then he felt it; the Firebomb burning deep into his muscle, his grip on his hammer loosening as he roared. And then it was over in a flash, nuke-hot plasma blazing outwards and instantly carbonizing almost all of his body, along with most of his packmates. One other Jiralhanae guard remained, as well as a Kig-Yar and an Unngoy, all of whom were disoriented, covered in viscera and burns, and in various states of confusion and disarray.

Nim continued to run, padding over the black smear across the floor as she delivered a swift buck to the back of the Jackal's psuedoavian cranium as it stumbled and scrambled to try and flank to a better position while hiding his body behind his shield. All for naught, even before Nim had severed it's cervical column with a brisk strike mid stride, as the direction he had scrambled for only led to the edge of the gangway that Nim had been sprinting down. The Brute, enraged at the loss of his pack leader, pounded the floor in apelike rage, but before he collected himself for a headlong rush to rip the mare to shreds, Nim had already passed him by, having switched to her sidearm after notching the rifle on her armor's spine. Nim didn't even look as she fired twice to her 4-5-o-clock, knowing she'd hit something to slow the creature, and slow it she did, as the massive bullets impacted his torso, plunging into his lung and passing fully through the tissue before being stopped by his spine, and the second impacted his leg, flattening against his femur, but retaining enough energy to follow the massive, overdeveloped bone's length, carving a furrow in it of splintered bone, until the bullet and its' shredded fragments were stopped by the Brute's knee-bones. The Brute's massive, pounding 7-chambered heart poured its' blood forth down the femoral artery, running "outboard" of the creature's femur as a result of its' specialized evolution, unlike Ponykind's "inboard" femorals. In under a minute, the Brute would be slipping out of consciousness as his final remaining packmate waddled away in panic.

Nim notched her pistol back onto her flank as she picked up the pace. The Cruiser had already begun maneuvering away. 150 meters. And spiking. Nim adjusted her plan. Instead of boarding in the dockyard, she would have to board in transit. Risky, without a prowler to bring her close, but she had to gamble for it. Protocol demands it. Refocusing her FARNDALE, she set the focus of her VISR to the edge of the gangway. 50 meters. She had about 3 seconds, probably less.

One, two, three! With bounding strides, Nim put a sense of spring to the toe of her hooves, bouncing for a moment as if a threstal highdiver preparing to astound the judges at Luna OCS Academy's Athletics Hall. She stumbled momentarily at her second hop as she adjusted to the new maneuvers of the Cruiser, a rotation on it's yaw axis as it descended from the docking station. Falling out of the energy barrier that contained the atmosphere, the ship was more than a quarter-klick away from her now. Too late to turn back now, Nim had already flown over the side, plunging headfirst into the black.

Pinning her hind legs together, her armored wings to her back, and her forelegs to her hips, she locked her eyes to the carrier's smooth topside. Already, her FARNDALE said it was about 800 meters away again, but she was undeterred. Embracing the plunge, she furrowed her brow, and planned on how she was going to make this happen. 600. 400. 150. 30. Nim had, for a brief few seconds, been accelerating as she fell in the artificial gravity, only for herself to reach a stable velocity 30 meters after she escaped the energy field. The First Law of Motion carried her at her immediate velocity towards the ship, and at about 50 meters away, she folded herself in half, twisting her body around to land like a cat, but her disorientation as gravity, artificially induced by the Cruiser's internal systems in a field reaching about 30 meters away from the ship, momentarily confused her and her ability to recover at the rate needed. Spartan training covered varying levels of gravity, and all sorts of microgravity, allowing all graduates to fight and maneuver in any environment, but sudden transitions between levels of gravity weren't exactly focused upon. Especially in circumstances like this. Nim slammed into the hull of the Cruiser, viscously rattled by her, effectively, 80 meter fall. Her armor took the brunt of the landing, the underlayer's capillary system pushing against the sudden deceleration in time with her own musculature, as if the two were one. Her energy shielding, however, was overloaded, and as if a pane of glass smashed with a hammer, it burst away in an electric glow. Nim's systems would take a few seconds to reboot, but so long as she wasn't taking fire, she was in the clear. And then the Cruiser started accelerating.

Nim tumbled backward, carried down the sloping top of the cruiser, into a vast valley on the top of the ship. Her backwards rolling sent her skittering, kicking the air from her lungs as she grunted with each sudden impact. She had tumbled almost 300 meters before she could recover, planting her hooves on the ship properly once more and bracing. Drawing her combat knife, she was prepared to drive it into the ship's hull for an anchor, unsure if she could penetrate the nanolaminate plating, but suddenly, her armor's early warning software began to alert her:

"SLIPSPACE RUPTURE DETECTED"

Nim glanced upwards, and suddenly her vision was overwhelmed by the bloom of a great rip in the blackness of space. A whirling vortex of exotic matter leaking into realspace flooding her vision with a great glow of energized hydrogen particles. Nim suddenly no longer felt very powerful. Her heart began to pound in her chest. Her breath drew short, into little hiccups as she realized she had seconds before she was totally obliterated. Was this what it was like to be a Grunt? Keying her FARNDALE, she tried to use it to access ONI's data on Covenant slipspace technology, a woefully anemic section of the servers. Her search of the redundant servers aboard her team's Prowler brought up about one speculative diagram, effectively the only thing she could use at this point and with this little time. Running her eyes over it, the most she could glean was that the quantum field that protected the ship from obliteration was smooth, with no sharp edges, and followed the smooth Cruiser's hull within microns in most places. "Most places" being the key phrasing. Less than 50 meters aft of her position, the deepest part of the valley in the dorsal section of the cruiser sat, just ahead of a massive, teardrop-shaped structure, around which a few minor alcoves lay, sharp edged enough that they just might leave some tolerances between the hull and total obliteration.

Nim swallowed, her tongue suddenly feeling dry, and threw herself backwards, scrambling to slide into the valley. Her wide visor slowly being overpowered by the glow as the cruiser accelerated into the fissure in spacetime. Exotic matter that did not belong in this universe danced and flittered in her eyes' reflections, coursing over the hull as she approached the rip. As light overtook her vision, Nim scrambled to an alcove that she prayed would not be missing from this cruiser. Her prayers answered, Nim hooked the knife over the edge of the alcove just before she passed it by, dragging herself in. Pressing her body against the bottom of the alcove, bracing her hooves as tightly as she could, and muscling with all her might to drive her combat knife into the hull in a part that was blacker than it was purple, she set herself as tight as she could, like a remora fish against a terran shark, hoping that her whole body was inside the field. Her heart pounded, her breath was shaking, her whole body barely suppressed from quivering in fear. She locked her armor, freezing her whole body in place and wrapping her in a higher-amplitude form of her personal shield. The light overtook her, and everything went black.

Was she dead? Did she fail? Her eyes flitted around, no! Her VISR was still active. And then she heard it. Thousands of active warnings.

"SLIPSPACE RUPTURE DETECTED! ARMOR LOCK FAILED! WARNING: VITALS DESTABLIZED! SLIPSPACE RUPTURE DETECTED! VITALS RESTABILIZED! ARMOR LOCK FAILED! ARMOR LOCK FAILED! SLIPSPACE RUPTURE DETECTED! WARNING: VITALS DESTABLIZED! VITALS RESTABILIZED!"

For the first time in a long time, Nim could truly say she felt absolute, unbridled fear. Her training had taught her to never show an outright emotional display, and certain techniques for mitigating emotional response had been imparted on her, but aside from taking sips of breath and mitigating her trembling heart, little of it applied here. Slipspace travel was dangerous enough inside of a ship. And here she was, clinging to the outside. She felt like her heart stopped. Maybe it had.

Nim stared into the void. Her wide Security-Class helmet's visor usually gave her almost unbeatable visibility, better than almost any of the other preferred helmets the Mjolnir series offered. Only Gungir and EVA classes could best her armor in the way of providing the widest unaided field of view available. But here, this afforded her nothing. Staring at a gap between her torso and her legs, Nim shuddered as she stared into a void beyond nothing. It felt like as she stared, hours, days, weeks passed. Her breathing slowed. The glow overtook her again.

Her ears filled with a rush of noise as she felt herself get thrown against the forward edge of the alcove she was hidden in. Nim grunted, as her suit rebooted some failing systems. Her head spun, and her eyes readjusted. She could see stars again. Keying her armor to run a check of her body, she ventured to raise her head now that she saw light reflecting off the nanolaminate around her.

"[CARDIAC SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[ENDOCRINE SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[NEURAL SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[SENSORY SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[LYMPHATIC SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[METABOLIC SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[SKELETAL SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[MUSCULAR SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]
[REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS: NOMINAL]..."

As the suit cycled through biomedical diagnostics, Nim glanced around. Normalspace. Rupture closed. All limbs intact. Weapons still available. Still alive, still on the Cruiser. Looking ahead, she saw a great green world, dotted and spackled in red. Nothing she could recognize.

"November-617, do you copy?"

"November-617 copies. Identify. Hrotti, is that you?"



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"Tobacco products, such as pipes, cigars, cigarettes, and cigarillos went out of style and common use very early in the 21st century, with the rise of propolene glycol/nicotine vapor inhalers, which provided a similar sensation to tobacco products, while reducing the negative medical symptoms of nicotine intake. By the mid-22nd century, even with the invention of self-ignition chemical technology, and the completion of medical research for treating and curing malignant neoplasmic disorders quickly and effectively in the 2220s, all but a very small group of enthusiasts in the UEG continued to use burning tobacco leaves as a method of recreational drug use.

In the 2470s, however, with the rise of 'flip' culture, which was greatly inspired by the youth-subcultures of the latter-half of the 20th century, tobacco use began to come into use once again. As '-980's-tough-boy', which itself greatly influenced the Fliphead subculture of the 2480s, became more popular, young adults in the scene began to mimic the dress and mannerisms of the characters in archived holos that were available on the 'movies' and music of the last decades of the 20th century. By the 2520s, when Flip had gone mainstream and Flip Clubs overtook all other youth-culture clubs in popularity, the fashionability of smoking 'darts' and 'cubans' or 'packin chaw' had overtaken clearpatches, bitevapes, and lobeclamps. Tobacco became so deeply rooted into Flip, that by the 2520s, the popular saying of 'if it doesn't burn, it doesn't shred' had become the unofficial fastest way to decide if a Flip club was worth the credits, based on smell alone. As flip permeated outside young-adult culture, particularly osmosing throughout the UNSC, pipes and cigars began to find an audience in more 'refined' circumstance. By the time of the Battle of Harvest, an unofficial divide appeared between the Officers and the Enlisted of the UNSC. 'Officers chuff pipes and sip cubans. Enlisted suck darts and pack chaw.'"