Reach, August 11, 2552, 26:30. There were less than thirty minutes left until midnight in this time zone on the planet.
At that moment, two "moons," one large and one small, one bright and one dim, hung high in Reach's night sky, making the night seem especially quiet and desolate...
Under cover of the night and the faint moonlight, two members of Noble Team, Noble 6 and Noble 3, quietly jumped down from a Pelican dropship on a mountainside in the Viery Mountains. Each carried an SRS99-series sniper rifle as they picked their way along the rugged mountain trail, heading on foot toward a valley in the distance.
Their mission tonight was to infiltrate a valley in the Viery region, one that UNSC instruments and satellites couldn't detect, and find a possible hidden Covenant base deep inside it, so they could assess the strength of the Covenant's vanguard forces.
Reliable intelligence showed that the Covenant's forces during their attack on the Visegrád Relay, their attempted raid on Sword Base, and yesterday's attack on a Helljumper special operations squad out on a training exercise—as well as all the clues gathered during prior reconnaissance—pointed to this location!
So, before the UNSC command on Reach could gather its superior ground forces and launch a surprise attack to wipe out the Covenant forward base that had infiltrated the planet and eliminate the enemy, securing this vital world, preliminary reconnaissance was absolutely necessary!
"..."
"..."
"Recon Team B reporting. Noble 3 and Noble 6 are in position!"
"Kat, this place is going to get lively soon. Any instructions?"
After walking silently alongside Noble 6 for a while, Noble 3, Jun, used his comms to report that the two of them were in position to the officer in charge of the mission: their commander and teammate,