Spartans Never Die

They're just Missing in Action

Ardent Prayer

Jorge-052 handed off his dogtags to Noble Six and said "Listen. Reach has been good to me. It's time to return the favor. Don't deny me this." Lifting up Noble Six, the colossal Spartan-II bid farewell to his brother-in-arms. "Tell her to make it count."

Tossing the smaller Spartan through the hangar's containment field and back toward Reach using nothing but the planet's gravity to pull him down from orbit, Jorge gravely turned his back on his homeworld and made the final preparations, with only the quietest ghost of doubt troubling his mind. The loss of the supercarrier would surely buy enough time for the UNSC to reinforce Reach and let the Covenant bleed themselves dry trying to take it. Wouldn't it?

Long Night of Solace

The standing bridge officer observed from his holographic viewscreen from the shipmaster's throne as Ardent Prayer silently pulled into its refueling station. Much like the Fleetmaster, he found the silence of the corvette unsettling. His anxiety was quickly proven justified as the officer operating the sensory systems blurted out "Impossible! General! Ardent Prayer is making an unstable tear in the Void Space!"

The top of Stark Tower, New York City, 2012

Loki looked down upon Erik Selvig, the middle-aged scientist who'd befriended his brother Thor several months ago, with a tolerant disdain. "At least this insect has learned to kneel. The others will follow soon once the Chitauri lay their armies low" he thought smugly. "Tell me, mortal, when will the portal be ready?"

Selvig, cooperating with Loki's invasion plan yet also beginning to subconsciously resist, answered in a nearly zombie-like monotone, "Sir, I'm running a few diagnostics on the activation sequence. It should be ready very soon."

Loki's eyes narrowed slightly, but chose to ignore the negligible resistance to his scepter's power. He had only a moment to relax, however, before the Tesseract abruptly sparked to life, causing a beam of energy to continuously fire into the sky. "I assume you've finished, then?" Loki said with a self-satisfied tone.

The scientist's astonishment set that happy thought to rest, however. His previously monotonous voice began to show concern. "No, milord. The engineers who prepared the device must have made a mistake in programming the diagnostic process. I'll set it right immediately." he said, frantically trying to regain control of the device.

The energy beam began expanding into a large, crackling sphere about a mile above the city of New York, shining blue from Cherenkov radiation emanating from it. Loki began to suspect a serious problem in the Tesseract's portal-generating device as the sphere seemed too unstable to be a wormhole. Suddenly, what appeared to be a lump of some silvery polymer nearly nine kilometers in length launched out from it at an unavoidable collision angle, quickly crashing into the Upper New York Bay and causing a small earthquake.

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, MORTAL?" Loki thundered in a voice that seemed unnaturally forceful, as if spoken by several men at once.

The scientist frantically altered the frequencies of the Tesseract's power output, and the sphere began to implode as the energy beam dissipated, culminating in an anti-climactic, small release of energy. Selvig responded "The errors have been corrected, sir. The portal to your army should be ready to open very soon. It seems that the program for the diagnostics hadn't fully taken into account the chain-reactive tendencies of the device, allowing for a premature activation which created a small tear in subspace. It's fortunate that it was quickly remedied; if left unattended the collapse of that subspace tear could have resulted in a powerful electromagnetic pulse. Luckily I managed to channel most of the energy back into the portal itself, so any further repercussions..."