"Whew! Whew!"
"!!"
At 3:34 p.m. on August 23, 2552, a figure in a "GEN1" MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor suit slowly climbed up the hillside. His armor plates were filthy, and even the emblem on his left chest was impossible to make out. He paused to catch his breath, then straightened and stared in disbelief at the terrifying scene before him.
"This..."
"My God!"
"Has the battle on Reach really gotten this bad?!"
That's right. The dust-covered man in the "GEN1" MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor was none other than Noble Team's temporarily "missing" Noble Six!
Earlier, Noble Five, George, had thrown him straight down from Reach's orbit. He'd made a free fall from space to the planet's surface and, by some "miracle," hadn't been killed on impact. Now, after walking for days through the wilderness—where Covenant interference had completely blocked communications—from the spot where he'd hit the ground, and climbing a hillside, Noble Six had finally reached the outskirts of New Alexandria. There, he'd seen the unbelievable scene before him.
"..."
"How could it be like this? That's impossible!"
"This shouldn't be happening..."
Yes. Looking at New Alexandria engulfed in flames, the billowing smoke, and the three Covenant SDV-class ships hovering over the city, while the sounds of human gunfire and screams echoed from within, Noble Six couldn't understand how things had come to this.
He remembered what he'd seen when his teammate, Noble Five George, had thrown him down from space. The Covenant flagship, the CSO-class supercarrier Long Night of Solace, had clearly been successfully destroyed, reduced to burning fragments that fell into Reach's atmosphere...
So, after George had sacrificed himself to take the enemy with him, buying them a great deal of precious time, why, nearly ten days later, had the UNSC Navy still failed to defeat the