Hey everyone. I'm currently invested in an intense job hunt which means I've had a surplus of free time on my hands recently. So, for poops and giggles, I decided to spend it trying my hand at a fanfic. I wasn't normally planning on showing anyone since it's a just-for-fun thing but I figured if anyone could give me some solid feedback on a Halo fanfic it would be Bnet. Feel free to criticize away. The story is called "Ghost Town" (not intended to be a reference to the H3 map) and this is my first pass at part 1. Hopefully you enjoy at least a little bit of it. Also, bonus points to anyone who catches the firefly reference. Part 1: Gunnery Sergeant Luke Evans stared down into his muddy cup of coffee trying to focus on anything but how fatigued his limbs felt. When he had first signed up for the corps he assumed that cryo sleep would be akin to a nap from heaven. As soon as he began his cryo training, though, all his preconceived notions had dissolved, leaving only the bitter truth - Cryo sleep was not something to be enjoyed. He always woke up feeling 10 times worse than he had gone in and was always welcomed back by a continuous stream of hacks, gags, and coughs. He hated it. It'd been about 30 minutes since he had left 'the freezer' and the coughing session had finally started to subside. He tilted his head back and took in a long, deep breath. It felt good to breath easy again. Now sitting alone in the mess hall of the UNSC frigate [i]Apollo[/i] waiting for his squad, he swirled his mug in small circles, watching the coffee slosh around the inside for a few seconds before tossing it back and drinking it down to the dregs. Hopefully the caffeine would stave off his weariness until after the briefing. "How's the freezer burn, gunny?" Evans heard someone say. He turned and saw his team's sharpshooter Corporal Steven Renard strolling into the mess hall with some coffee of his own. "Still thawing," Evans said simply. Renard planted himself at the table opposite Evans. Renard was the tallest member of the squad and whenever they were face to face like this it made Evans self-conscious of the fact that he was being looked down upon. Evans had once seen Renard stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a Spartan. Those armored freaks normally dwarfed anyone who sized-up next to them but Renard had come in only a couple of inches shy. It had become somewhat of a bragging point for him. Evans noticed that Renard had already given his red hair a fresh buzz. He seemed to be handling the defrost better than Evans. "I see Rourke and Vitti are taking their time," Renard said, taking a sip of his coffee. "They better pick up the pace. Briefing is in 20." As soon as Renard said this the other half of the squad, Kevin Rourke and Dom Vitti, joined them in the mess hall. They made quite an odd coupling at first glance. Rourke was a hulking beast of a soldier. He was tall - granted not quite as tall as Renard - and built like a brick house. Dom on the other hand was barely over five foot and lean. They seemed like polar opposites based on aesthetics but the two of them meshed together as battle-buddies better than any pairing Evans had ever met. "Keep your pants on Renny," Rourke said. "We're here." "I know you missed us, sleeping all alone in that twin-sized cryo-pod and what not but we're here now, baby," Dom snarkily chimed in. Evans couldn't help but snort at Dom's remark. "You know, if you're not careful you're going to lose me," Renard said with a simple shrug of his shoulders. "Oh no! How will we ever reach the coffee grinds on the top shelf without lanky Renny around?" Rourke replied with a smirk. Despite the verbal cheap shots, Evans' squad was extremely tight-knit, even by ODST standards. They'd been through hell and back together several times and had always managed to come out on top. It was a bond not only forged in blood but drenched in it. Their squad had sent countless covenant bastards to their dear and fluffy lords. He was proud to call himself the squad's leader. "So what's the skinny, boss?" Dom asked. "We got some covies to take care of or has the UNSC finally decided to acknowledge our greatness with a surprise, all expense paid trip to the tropics?" "When is it anything besides the covenant?" Renard said without looking up from his coffee. "Lighten up Renny ol' pal," Dom said. "With that attitude the bikini beach babes will likely steer clear of you." Evans didn't say anything. The truth was he had no idea why they were here. They'd been scooped up, frozen, and shot out here so fast that no one had even taken the time to explain why they were being shipped out in the first place. Renard had a point, however. It had to be covenant. This far into the war the UNSC couldn't afford to focus on anything but the aliens. Still, Evans hadn't seen any soldiers besides his squad and the crew on the frigate. If they were here to deal with a covenant threat then why only send a four-man squad? "How about we head to the briefing and find out?" Evans finally said. "If we are headed to a beach, first round is on me." Fifteen minutes later Evans and his squad were huddled around a holotable with the Captain of the [i]Apollo[/i], Louis Friedman. The captain's appearance always caught Evans off guard. He looked out of place in an officer's uniform. Like Rourke, Friedman was a large, muscular man who would've seemed more at home in a boxing ring than on the bridge of a warship. "It's good to see you gentlemen," Captain Friedman said. "I apologize for the rather swift departure but the situation demanded it." The captain hit a button on the holo-table and a virtual representation of a planet with two orbiting moons appeared. Evans didn't recognize it. "I'm not seeing any tropical resorts," Dom said. Evans shot Dom his very best 'stow it' grimace. "This is Resnick," Friedman informed them, paying no attention to Dom's quip. "The planet is rather scarce on human population. There are only a handful of colonies on the whole planet and they are each separated by hundreds of miles." Friedman hit another button and icons showing the location of each settlement on the planet's surface popped up. Evans realized Friedman hadn't been exaggerating when he had said a handful of colonies. From what he could see, there were only five or six on all of Resnick. Evans had never seen a planet with so few people. "Three days ago at approximately 0300 hours, communication with the colony Tarrum on Resnick was cut off." Friedman said. "Because of the small populace on the planet, the lack of UNSC presence, and its distance off of the beaten interstellar path we believed that the planet had flown under the covenant's radar and that the covenant's ships had simply bypassed the planet all together." "So now they've been invaded, sir?" Rourke asked. "To be honest soldier, we're not sure," Friedman replied. Evans' squad exchanged a series of puzzled gazes. 'Not sure' wasn't exactly a term that came up a lot when discussing a covenant invasion. There were usually tell-tale signs like explosions, firefights, and covenant ships bombarding the surface with plasma. These things were hard to miss. "Once we had become aware of the situation, probes were launched to recon Resnick," Friedman continued. "This is what they found." The captain pulled up the probes' findings on the holotable. It looked exactly like a colony should. The bird's-eye-view shots showed a small city laid out in a typical grid fashion. There was no structural damage to any of the buildings, no hail of the covenant's superheated plasma, nothing. That was also the problem, though. There was [i]absolutely[/i] nothing. Even at the early hours in which the images had been taken, the streets shouldn't have been this barren. Tarrum's vista should have been alive with the bustle of civilians beginning their morning routine and making their way to work. Instead, all Evans could see were empty roads and the vacant gray pathways of the city sidewalks. There weren't even any dead bodies to indicate that they'd been attacked. Tarrum had officially become a ghost town.