[p]“March 2560. The Spartans and marines of the Avery J. Johnson Academy attempt to hold the line as the Banished invasion begins.”[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/38365036/913f01f5067379830a6d3c04f2f9a01003b30282.png"][/p][p][/p][p]Halo: Battle for the Academy – Part 2 is available here, on Halo Waypoint, as a free PDF, and in audiobook format on YouTube.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]
Historian's Note
[p][/p][p]Halo: Battle for the Academy Part 2 takes place on March 3, 2560, less than three months before the Master Chief is awakened at Zeta Halo.[/p][p][/p]
MARCH 3, 2560
HESYCHIUS MOUNTAINS, NYSA // 1532 HOURS
[p][/p][p]Some battles do not begin with the stroke of a hammer or the firing of a bullet, but with parley.[/p][p][/p][p]Though it is exceedingly rare for the Banished to step onto the field of battle and leave without a drop of blood spilled, the right of parley was a tradition practiced by Atriox from the time when the Banished was a fledgling alliance of mercenaries and exiles. Based on the ancient Sangheili parley formation, the negotiator stands at the center and is flanked by a bodyguard on the right and an adviser on the left.[/p][p][/p][p]Spartan Ilsa Zane strode forwards, the towering, armored form of her daskalo Chieftain Atticus a step behind in the adviser’s position. To her right was an empty space. The Banished Spartan had no need for a bodyguard—an arrogant move perhaps, but she was happy to shirk tradition as a grander display of strength. Though they had arrived several hours earlier, they had used that time to identify key strategic locations for deployment and scout local outposts to conduct their own assessments. Atticus had also shared his wisdom on the greater game they were playing to maximize their gain from this invasion within the political structure of the Banished.[/p][p][/p][p]A hundred meters away, an M15 Razorback had come to a halt and Commander Laurette Agryna approached while flanked by two other Spartans. Iratus’s data was already proving useful, as Zane’s HUD identified one as Sigrid Eklund and the other… the other she recognized immediately.[/p][p][/p][p]Dinh.[/p][p][/p][p]The mere sight of him sent ice through her veins. Dinh was one of many old scores she had to settle—perhaps one of the oldest.[/p][p][/p][p]“You have something I want,” Ilsa Zane said, her tone clipped and direct. “Give me the AI now and my forces will leave. There will be no invasion. You will be free to continue your miserable lives.”[/p][p][/p][p]Spartan Agryna stood stoic and still, her brow furrowed in the early evening light as she cast a scrutinous gaze over Zane’s armor.[/p][p][/p][p]“Hell,” Zane continued as she lifted an arm and pointed at Dinh. “Throw him in as part of the deal and I’ll even give you my word. You only get this offer once.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Even if I believed for a second that your offer was genuine,” Agryna replied, “the answer is no.”[/p][p][/p][p]Zane smiled. Good.[/p][p][/p][p]At that moment, the clouds began to part, giving way to the immense bow of her dreadnought, Ghost of Kholo.[/p][p][/p][p]Looming directly above as it passed overhead, drop bases began deploying en masse from the dreadnought’s underbelly, accompanied by waves of pods that rocketed to the ground and unleashed the alien warriors within who were hungry for the taste of Spartan blood. A talon of Banshees streamed out of the ship’s hangar, serving as the protective escorts for Phantom dropships.[/p][p][/p][p]Zane and Atticus turned, heading to a forward operating base. The Spartans, too, made their way back to the Academy to mount their defenses.[/p][p][/p][p]Today, the warriors of Zane’s clan would face their greatest challenge yet—and all would have a chance to claim the glory of being known as Spartan killers.[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/38365036/83c76b8e49489beec11a958ef27df39daf7ffb02.png"][/p]
AVERY J. JOHNSON ACADEMY, MAIN CAMPUS // 1849 HOURS
[p][/p][p]The Banshee’s incoming fire chewed through the drop wall deployed by Spartan Eusebio. Flecks of castoff plasma diffused and redirected by the equipment’s roiling magnetic field found purchase on Eusebio’s shoulder and chest plate, sizzling the outer boundary of his Mjolnir’s energy shielding. The orange armor plating wouldn’t last long against direct hits if he wasn’t careful, prompting him to tuck into a rapid roll for cover behind a reinforced concrete barrier.[/p][p][/p][p]The Banished drop pods streaming in from the dreadnought like a meteor shower were a twisted picture of what he imagined his enemies had once seen during the Covenant War. Eusebio had been an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper before recruitment into the SPARTAN-IV program. It used to be him and his squad dropping in behind enemy lines to turn the tide of battle. Now he wondered if this battle might be over within just a few short hours of it getting underway.[/p][p][/p][p]“Eusebio!” His attention snapped in the voice’s direction. “Eyes on me!”[/p][p][/p][p]He caught the electroplated blue of Commander Agryna’s visor as she ran through a series of hand gestures the Spartans had seen countless times during their training drills. Responding to the unspoken instructions, Eusebio spun and turned to peek out from cover before levelling his VK78 in the direction of the oncoming Banished front line.[/p][p][/p][p]Commander Agryna mirrored Eusebio’s motions and emptied her assault rifle into three Grunts and a Brute warrior before switching to her Sidekick to take out two Jackals unlucky enough to have heads exposed over their shield gauntlets.[/p][p][/p][p]“Fall back and regroup at this waypoint!” Agryna dropped a local nav marker to ping a location several meters away. “Spartan Eklund, do you copy?”[/p][p][/p][p]“I copy, Commander.” Eklund’s voice rang through Agryna’s comms. “I’ve fallen back to the relay junction, but I’ll run out of ammo before they run out of assholes.”[/p][p][/p][p]Agryna swore quietly to herself. “Dinh, grab O’Brien and Sinclair. Get to Eklund and provide whatever help you can. Eusebio, Denning, and I will take the bay door.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Understood. We’re on it.” Dinh responded.[/p][p][/p][p]Agryna tried not to dwell on the grimness of what was now unfolding. They’d certainly run enough simulation work to prepare for the eventuality of such an attack, but those scenarios always ended the same way: lessons learned and lives intact. She accepted the sting to her pride for what it was —the knowledge that she had let it happen under her watch.[/p][p][/p][p]Could she have made different choices?[/p][p][/p][p]Could she have done something to make these events play out in any other way?[/p][p][/p][p]For now, there was only one question that mattered—only one question that she ultimately knew she’d get answered: Had she prepared her Spartans enough for what had arrived at their doorstep?[/p][p][/p][p]Across the battlefield, Dinh found his way to Eklund’s side.[/p][p][/p][p]“So, here we are again.” The words were tinged with wry amusement.[/p][p][/p][p]“Not now.” Eklund muttered, looking through her scope as she kept pressure on the Banished frontlines.[/p][p]“Is this more like Dansenia or New Berlin?”[/p][p][/p][p]“I hate them all equally.” Eklund knew Dinh’s approach was taking the whole laugh in the face of danger angle a bit too literally, but she didn’t have the energy for it now. “O’Brien—cover me while I reload. Get shots in that damn berserker!”[/p][p][/p][p]Spartan O’Brien turned to acquire her new target, trying desperately to avoid incoming plasma bolts while sinking every assault rifle round she had into the rapidly approaching Brute.[/p][p][/p][p]It wasn’t enough.[/p][p][/p][p]Just as O’Brien’s shields popped from the plasma fire, the Brute berserker barreled shoulder-first into the Spartan, pinning her against the nearby wall and knocking the wind out of her. As she struggled and her vision began to go dark, O’Brien saw—or rather heard—Spartan Sinclair leap into action, mounting the Brute’s shoulders and stabbing them multiple times with a combat knife.[/p][p][/p][p]The berserker bellowed in pain, but its rage was undiminished. It reached its blood-soaked arms back, grabbing Sinclair and whipping the Spartan overhead, sending him crashing into the nearby wall. The force dislodged Sinclair’s helmet, the natural slope in the terrain causing it to tumble out of reach.[/p][p][/p][p]Barely conscious, Sinclair split mouthfuls of blood while watching as Dinh tried to pull the berserker’s attention with Bandit fire and Eklund deftly avoided the overhead swing of another Brute’s gravity hammer.[/p][p][/p][p]Every bullet impact slowed the lumbering berserker down, but didn’t stop it. Sinclair managed to raise an arm to offer an archaic profane hand gesture in the Brute’s face before the alien brought both massive fists down on top of the Spartan’s head.[/p][p][/p][p]Several heavy shots rang out from a Bulldog shotgun and the Brute finally collapsed on top of Sinclair, two warriors from different worlds turned to corpses on Nysan soil.[/p][p][/p][p]“Eklund!” Dinh yelled as he tossed the spent Bulldog to the side. “We need to go. Get inside!”[/p][p][/p][p]After finishing off the Brute warrior she had tangled with moments before, Eklund leapt to Dinh’s side, reaching down to get a proper grip on the armor of the unconscious O’Brien while Dinh got the bay door open.[/p][p][/p][p]A few moments later, they were inside with the bulkhead door resealed. Eklund flagged down a small group of combat medics and directed them to see to O’Brien.[/p][p][/p][p]“How long do you think we have?” There was little laughter in Dinh’s voice now.[/p][p][/p][p]Eklund took a few breaths before responding. “I’m not sure it’s even up to us anymore.”[/p][p][/p][p]“So, not long.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Probably not long, no.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Dinh, Eklund, do you read me?” They were interrupted by Agryna’s voice in their TEAMCOM helmet channels.[/p][p][/p][p]“Loud and clear, Commander,” Dinh replied. “What’s the plan?”[/p][p][/p][p]“We’re on lockdown,” Agryna informed them. “Put whoever you can at the gates, and have marines get the wounded back to the med bay—then meet me in Ops West.”[/p][p][/p][p]“We’re on it.” Dinh turned back towards Eklund. “You okay?”[/p][p][/p][p]“I will be.” Eklund’s response was confident but laced with obvious exhaustion.[/p][p][/p][p]Within moments, they arrived at Agryna’s position, ready to review their next steps.[/p][p][/p][p]“I’m sending fireteams on parallel paths to enact the Cole Protocol across our remaining facilities.” Agryna said. “If they can get the job done, we’ll at least be able to limit some of the damage.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Right now, damage limitation counts as ‘good news,’ so I’ll take it.” Dinh replied.[/p][p][/p][p]Agryna nodded in agreement. “The lockdown should buy us a li—”[/p][p][/p][p]“I think you’ve forgotten who is actually in charge here.”[/p][p][/p][p]Iratus’s voice came booming over every available channel and rang through the hallway speakers.[/p][p][/p][p]“Let me offer a friendly reminder: it’s not you.”[/p][p][/p][p]The whine and hiss of a symphony of servo motors and hydraulic actuators sounded as every door, gate, and shutter in the Academy opened, unlatched, and raised—followed quickly by the resumption of shouting, screams, and gunfire as Banished troops began to pour into every available ingress point.[/p][p][/p]
MARCH 4, 2560
[p]SWORD OF CONJUNCTION // 0327 HOURS[/p][p][/p][p]“Shipmistress, we are exiting slipspace now.”[/p][p][/p][p]Shipmistress Vedu ‘Ehtar rose from her command chair and looked out of the bridge’s viewport as the pitch-black emptiness of slipspace gave way to a field of stars, vibrant nebulae clouds, and the human world designated “Nysa.”[/p][p][/p][p]The bridge crew immediately set to work, Sangheili and humans operating consoles as they began processing incoming streams of data from the ship’s sensors. At the center of the room, a large holographic representation of Nysa was projected.[/p][p][/p][p]“Confirming scout-eyes have been launched and are approaching the target area,” Ensign Sethu reported.[/p][p][/p][p]It took only a few centals before the central planetary holograph began updating with a variety of data points, building a grim picture of what their allies on the ground were facing as the probes’ visual feeds were projected on screens around the bridge.[/p][p][/p][p]Phantom dropships were converging on Nysa’s Academy facilities while an array of Banished occupational infrastructure had been deployed all across the continent. War-skiffs and Gravemaker battle-nests streamed out from outposts and foundries while a fleet of siege-hauler craft ferried supplies from the source of this invasion: a Banished dreadnought.[/p][p][/p][p]Shipmistress ‘Ehtar had greatly desired the opportunity to take the fight to the Banished with Sword of Conjunction and put her crew to the test, but engaging such a behemoth with an A’uzr-pattern frigate—less than even one-third the size of the dreadnought—would be suicidal. They had neither the firepower nor tonnage, and it wasn’t their mission to engage the enemy.[/p][p][/p][p]The A’uzr’s prime advantage was speed. Their powerful slipspace borer had enabled them to reach Nysa in a matter of hours so they could assess the situation.[/p][p][/p][p]“Ma’am, I have the UNSC Fearful Symmetry on the line,” said Lieutenant Mercer.[/p][p][/p][p]“Put them through,” the shipmistress confirmed.[/p][p][/p][p]Mercer tapped a command and a holo-emitter flashed to life, forming the image of a human male standing at attention. He had a shaved head and strange markings on the left side of his face—a fist clutching three primitive arrows.[/p][p][/p][p]“Shipmistress,” he said. “We’re at the rendezvous point on the edge of the Hyades system and are ready to move as soon as your assessment is complete.”[/p][p][/p][p]“You need wait no longer, we require no further clarity,” she replied, nodding to Mercer as he began transmitting the data they had already gathered. “Nysa is under a full-scale invasion by the Banished. This will not be a battle to reclaim the planet. We must begin evacuation procedures as soon as your ship arrives.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Understood. We’ll be with you as soon as we can to lay the table.”[/p][p][/p][p]With that, the hologram disappeared and Shipmistress ‘Ehtar was left to momentarily untangle the human’s metaphor—something their kind had a particular and peculiar proclivity for which made many of her interactions with them confusing. She imagined that it meant they would be ready for battle.[/p][p][/p][p]“Prepare to launch Banshee talons,” she commanded. “Amity, Harmony, and Sympathy Wings will harass the enemy forces to provide cover for the evacuation when the UNSC frigate arrives. Direct Riftborn operatives to their pods—they will be deploying immediately.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Relaying orders now, shipmistress.”[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/38365036/5135907a35d3288f0cf4789392b4b5bb04eeb03a.png"][TAG-430][/p]
SWORD OF CONJUNCTION, DEPLOYMENT BAY // 0337 HOURS
[p][/p][p]Ovi ‘Taar and Spartan Adrian Vesco had just finished gearing up with their four fellow Riftborn operatives—Babych and ‘Toizari, along with Prentis and ‘Ookol—when the order to drop arrived from one of the bridge officers. Vesco stowed a pulse carbine into the weapon rack of his pod while ‘Taar fixed an M739 light machine gun to his own.[/p][p][/p][p]“Spartan Vesco,” Ovi ‘Taar called. “I have been getting asked what my rank is, I keep telling them it is private!”[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco choked out a laugh as he rolled his eyes. “Really, Ovi? That’s the line you wanna go out with?”[/p][p][/p][p]“Perhaps you might care to lighten the mood?”[/p][p][/p][p]“Alright… What did the Unggoy say before going into battle?”[/p][p][/p][p]‘Taar paused for a moment before shrugging his shoulders. “I give up.”[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco snorted. “Oh, so you’ve heard that one before.”[/p][p][/p][p]They climbed into their pods—stealth-specialized Yado-pattern intrusion carapaces—and nodded to each other as their hatches sealed, levity giving way to business by-the-book. Holographic displays activated, linking to Vesco’s visor as he confirmed their TEAMCOM and TEAMBIO synchronizations were successful.[/p][p][/p][p]“Victory to clan and kin, Riftborn,” a Sangheili officer said over their comms. “Prepare to deploy in three… two… one…”[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco felt a sudden jolt as the pod was released from Sword of Conjunction’s deployment bay and plummeted through Nysa’s exosphere. Everybody who dropped feet first into a hot zone had their own ways of getting through it—Vesco wasn’t one to close his eyes and quietly hope he’d survive, but instead found he’d developed a habit of humming old shanties he remembered from home.[/p][p][/p][p]He’d done this more times than he could remember, though only a handful of times in an alien intrusion carapace. The sensation was quite different as gravitic compensators made the ride feel a little smoother than it was in a standard human entry vehicle. In those metal coffin rides, one truly felt that they were at the mercy of the many random and cascading consequences of actions taken on the battlefield.[/p][p][/p][p]The pod impacted with a thud, and the hatch immediately disengaged, allowing Vesco to grab his weapon and leap into action as the other five pods successfully completed their descents. ‘Taar had landed about a hundred meters away while the other pods were further afield, closer to their own pre-designated targets. One of their scout-eyes passed overhead, no doubt relaying visual confirmation to Sword of Conjunction that they had made it to Nysa’s surface.[/p][p][/p][p]“Our primary objective is to locate the Academy’s Commander,” Spartan Babych said over TEAMCOM as the three pairs moved out. “Secondary: to rally any additional groups of survivors, then trigger our locator beacons for pick-up.”[/p][p][/p][p]Five status lights winked green in response.[/p][p][/p][p]Regrouping with ‘Taar, both Spartan and Sangheili made their approach towards the Academy’s main complex, jogging through green fields illuminated by the pre-dawn light shining over the mountains. Expecting to have to work their way into the Academy, they instead found that every entrance to the facility was already open.[/p][p][/p][p]From the sounds of it, the battle was either dying down or the nature of how it was being fought had dramatically changed. At this point, it seemed likely that the Banished controlled much of the local area while UNSC forces were holed up in fortified positions, waiting for the right moments to strike.[/p][p][/p][p]“Long-range motion sensor is picking up a cluster of friendly IFFs not far away,” Vesco said.[/p][p][/p][p]“Let us make haste.”[/p][p][/p][p]The Riftborn pair dropped down into what appeared to be a firing range connected to an adjacent armory. As they approached the door, each took up positions on either side. Vesco caught enemy movement on his motion tracker and heard a loud clanging sound within.[/p][p][/p][p]‘Taar peered inside, his helmet activating a tactical eyepiece that slid over his left eye, and relayed his feed to Vesco.[/p][p][/p][p]Inside the armory, a colossal Jiralhanae chieftain was tearing off the grated hatches for each weapon locker and handing the contents out to the other Banished forces inside with him. From ‘Taar’s feed, Vesco counted two Jiralhanae—both of whom were now equipped with Bulldog shotguns—and five Kig-Yar who were holding human sniper rifles.[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco’s Sangheili partner slipped back into cover behind the door and checked his M739 SAW, then nodded to Vesco. It was the same silent “We can take them” nod they had exchanged a thousand times.[/p][p][/p][p]Moving swift and silent as a shadow, Spartan Vesco leapt through the entrance to the armory and primed two fragmentation grenades, tossing them at the Banished forces.[/p][p][/p][p]The chieftain was faster and more aware than Vesco had anticipated, lifting his gravity hammer and smashing it down on the ground, the gravitic pulse sending a shockwave that scattered his own forces along with the grenades. Upon detonation, two of the Kig-Yar that had been thrown aside were engulfed in a fiery explosion and one of the Jiralhanae held a hand to his eyes, dazed from the concussive blast.[/p][p][/p][p]That was Ovi ‘Taar’s cue to break from cover and unleash hell with his machine gun, sending controlled volleys of 7.62mm armor piercing rounds into the stragglers. Dark purple blood sprayed out of three Kig-Yar as their lithe bodies were torn apart under fire, staining the concrete ground. Just as one of the Jiralhanae warriors regained his senses and lowered his arm, Vesco switched to his Sidekick and plugged five rounds into the Brute’s head.[/p][p][/p][p]“Two targets left,” Vesco reported. The chieftain appeared to have taken cover, and the second Brute–[/p][p][/p][p]Without warning, the second Brute slammed its entire body weight into Vesco, roaring as it leapt on top of him and began frantically clawing at the Spartan, beating at his energy shields until they burst.[/p][p][/p][p]‘Taar spun around and managed to fire several rounds that struck the Brute in the side, but the Sangheili missed the chieftain slamming its gravity hammer into the weapons locker unit itself. Vesco threw the Brute off of him and sprinted towards his companion.[/p][p][/p][p]The locker units were large steel crates designed to move along two floor tracks due to their immense weight. Ovi ‘Taar realized where he was standing too late to react.[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco dove forwards, hoping to tackle ‘Taar out of the way, but the unit—struck with such force by the gravity hammer that it lifted off its tracks—crashed into him with a sickening crunch.[/p][p][/p][p]The chieftain bellowed in satisfied rage. Vesco took up his companion’s weapon, unloading the rest of the SAW’s drum magazine. In launching the locker unit, the chieftain had sacrificed his own cover, paying for that action as he was now completely exposed. There were only seventeen rounds left in the magazine, but it was enough to shred through the chieftain’s thick armor plating.[/p][p][/p][p]The chieftain barely seemed to register the pain and advanced towards Vesco as the magazine was spent. It snatched the SAW from Vesco’s hands and tossed it aside like a toy before delivering a swift punch to the Spartan’s head—a blow that brought him to his knees and would have undoubtedly killed him if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.[/p][p][/p][p]Ears ringing, vision swimming, Vesco was only vaguely aware of the muffled sound of assault rifle bursts a few meters away. It took the explosive entry through the far door to the armory to draw his focus—and then he saw them: a dozen marines led by a Spartan in cream-white armor.[/p][p][/p][p]“That’s right, you bastard,” one of the marines shouted as Vesco heard strained grunts and heavy footfalls from the chieftain. “Run!”[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco crawled towards the locker units, finding Ovi ‘Taar crushed between them, an outstretched hand still twitching as his breathing became increasingly labored. His vitals on TEAMBIO were rapidly declining.[/p][p][/p][p]“Ovi,” Vesco’s voice was rough, his hand gentle as it settled on his partner’s wrist.[/p][p][/p][p]Somewhere behind him he could hear the din of conversation, the barking of orders, but his attention remained fixed on the brother who had watched his back for over five years.[/p][p][/p][p]“Clear the room, Neely. Make sure there aren’t any more surprises here.”[/p][p][/p][p]“We’re all good, Commander. Looks like our friend here took care of the rest.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Spartan Vesco,” ‘Taar’s eyes brightened for a moment as he croaked the words. “What– do you call a–”[/p][p][/p][p]The Sangheili went still.[/p][p][/p][p]“Ovi… Ovi?”[/p][p][/p][p]Though he fought to stay conscious, Vesco felt himself getting pulled away as his vision blurred—the sight of Ovi ‘Taar growing further and further away until the armory’s bay door closed. He could just about make out the steady assurances coming from the commander. “Easy, Spartan. Come with us, we’ll get you patched up.”[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/38365036/5f92c944839747774ea13fdab90e956e92c9e135.png"][TAG-640][/p]
AI LAB // 0429 HOURS
[p][/p][p]Commander Agryna gently set the Spartan down by the AI lab’s door and waved for a corpsman to tend to him. She didn’t recognize him, but the questions would have to wait until he was conscious.[/p][p][/p][p]The rest of the marines, led by Corporal Neely, took up positions outside the AI lab, setting up barricades down two short flights of stairs facing a bulkhead door that led out to the training grounds.[/p][p][/p][p]“Commander,” Chief Engineer Hannah Roberts called. “We’re receiving a transmission from another local facility.”[/p][p][/p][p]Commander Agryna approached. “Let’s hear it.”[/p][p][/p][p]“–Protocol initiated, I say again: Cole Protocol initiated. Spartan reinforcements arrived to help clear the deck and finalize the data purge process.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Sounds like Rook really gave ‘em hell out there,” Dinh said. “But what good does the Cole Protocol do us now?”[/p][p][/p][p]“Iratus has plundered our archives for data on highly classified information,” Roberts explained. “The Cole Protocol initiates a deletion subroutine that terminates that data, along with any local carriers that have downloaded it.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Including Iratus himself?” Dinh asked.[/p][p][/p][p]“It’s part of the RUINA failsafe upgrade devised to address the risk posed by rogue AIs. If Iratus remains in those systems, he’s putting himself at significant risk.”[/p][p][/p][p]Eklund considered for a moment before asking, “That means he’s going to need to find some kind of shelter, right? A central server where he has control so he can hang onto what he’s scavenged.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Which will bring him right back here,” Roberts nodded. “The one place he’s safe, ironically enough, is with us.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Can we download him onto a data chip?”[/p][p][/p][p]Eklund tilted her head towards Dinh. “You’re not thinking of putting him in your head again, are you?”[/p][p][/p][p]“Actually,” Dinh growled. “I’m thinking of crushing the little bastard in my fist.”[/p][p][/p][p]As if on cue, the central holotable’s glow turned red as Iratus’s form appeared. “I’m afraid it won’t be that simple.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Right on time,” Roberts said. “Hello again, Iratus.”[/p][p][/p][p]“I congratulate you on a well-coordinated stalemate, Chief Engineer Roberts. I am stuck here with you, but… oh, it’s just a matter of time before the Banished come knocking on your door.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Muzzle him, would you?” Agryna asked, to which Roberts obliged by raising a containment shield around the holotable’s display. “He’s right. We’ve got this place locked down but not for long. And when the Banished get in here… we’ve got nowhere left to fall back to.”[/p][p][/p][p]Agryna’s attention was diverted by a groan near the door, the injured Spartan she and the marines had rescued was getting to his feet.[/p][p][/p][p]“Actually, that’s not quite true, Commander,” he strained to say.[/p][p][/p][p]“I don’t think I recognize you, Spartan?”[/p][p][/p][p]He swayed on the spot for a moment before regaining his balance and composure. “Vesco. Spartan Adrian Vesco, Anvil Station.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Anvil?” Dinh turned to face him. “You got our message?”[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco walked forwards a few paces and Agryna moved to his side, placing a hand on his back to keep him supported. “Affirmative. But we had to scramble for naval assets. We arrived first with Sword of Conjunction to assess the situation before signaling the UNSC Fearful Symmetry to jump in and assist with the evacuation. Me and five other Riftborn operatives were sent in first to find you. My partner, Ovi…” Vesco trailed off. Agryna surmised that the Sangheili they’d found crushed in the armory must have been with him.[/p][p][/p][p]“Your mission?”[/p][p][/p][p]Vesco regained his focus and addressed Agryna directly. “Our mission is to live to fight another day, Commander.”[/p][p][/p][p]Agryna’s expression hardened. “We fight to win.”[/p][p][/p][p]“And to do that, I’m afraid we have to lose today.” Vesco retrieved a small device from the storage unit inside his Mjolnir armor’s thigh plating.[/p][p][/p][p]“What’s that?” Agryna asked.[/p][p][/p][p]“Locator beacon. This’ll ping the Symmetry with our location and they’ll direct a Pelican to pick us up. You have a landing pad outside?”[/p][p][/p][p]“We do, so I suggest you all get to it now,” Agryna said. “I’ll hold the fort here. If Nysa is going down, it’s my duty as Commander to go with it.”[/p][p][/p][p]Chief Engineer Roberts sighed, shaking her head. “No, you’re not. There’s nothing left for bullets to do here. We’ve lost. The only thing left is to try to remove as much information from Iratus as possible—that’s my job.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Hannah, you can’t–”[/p][p][/p][p]“Actually, I can.” She stood up straighter, even as she was dwarfed by the average height of the Spartans in the room. “Sorry Commander, but I’m pulling rank. As head of cybersecurity dealing with a threat to humanity from a hostile artificial intelligence, my authority takes precedent in this situation.”[/p][p][/p][p]“We’ve got your back, Spartans,” Corporal Neely said from the adjacent room. “Anybody who wants to leave can do so. Those of us who stay will buy you the time you need.” The marines remained at their posts, resolute. “That settles that.”[/p][p][/p][p]“I’m receiving a confirmation signal,” Vesco said. “Symmetry’s locked onto our beacon. We need to get moving.”[/p][p][/p][p]Agryna stood still for a moment, a storm of conflicting thoughts thundering through her head. She met the chief engineer’s gaze, nodded, and finally said, “I’m sorry.”[/p][p][/p][p]Roberts gestured for them to get going. “It’s my honor, Commander. Our honor.” She gave a wry smile. “Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind.”[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/38365036/d9ad039f5d78b42f1479736898348857b5abb515.png"][/p]
PELICAN BRAVO-198 // 0441 HOURS
[p][/p][p]As the Pelican descended towards the landing pad outside the Academy’s primary complex, Jun-A266 saw buildings aflame, from which plumes of blackened smoke appeared as signal flares of devastation.[/p][p][/p][p]A few kilometers away, the lone Banished dreadnought loomed over the mountains.[/p][p][/p][p]“Captain, you have that distraction we ordered?” Jun asked.[/p][p][/p][p]“We’re ready on your mark.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Fire at will.”[/p][p][/p][p]From the dreadnought’s starboard side, a shadow passed through the clouds at incredible speed. The Mulsanne-class frigate Fearful Symmetry was gunning for the Banished ship like a bullet as it unleashed its primary weapon, a brightlance reflex laser. This directed energy beam took the place of the more traditional magnetic accelerator cannon but was no less effective in the right scenarios.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun watched as a streak of white-blue energy erupted from between the frigate’s two booms, directly impacting the dreadnought’s starboard bow, temporarily overloading many of the ship’s systems. Symmetry then fired its rear thrusters as it passed over its target and disappeared into Nysa’s upper atmosphere.[/p][p][/p][p]“We’re clear, initiate landing.” Jun ordered the pilot.[/p][p][/p][p]He headed into the Pelican’s troop bay where Rosenda-A344, fully clad in her Mjolnir armor, finished inspecting a Hydra missile launcher. She grabbed a sniper rifle from the weapons rack and held it out to Jun.[/p][p][/p][p]It was with only a barely perceptible moment of hesitation that he accepted the rifle. He’d been off the field for years; after the fall of Reach and the end of the Covenant War, he had chosen to serve as a recruiter for the next generation of humanity’s heroes. Though he still kept his skills sharp, he had fully believed it when Musa said to him in jest that he might be one of only a handful of Spartan old-timers that would end their career through retirement.[/p][p][/p][p]The galaxy, it seemed, had other plans, and called upon him to serve once more.[/p][p][/p][p]In truth, that was why he had sought out Rosenda. As a former member of Noble Team herself, prior to being transferred to special covert operations at the end of 2551, he needed somebody he could trust beyond any doubt to keep him at his best. He could count on one hand the number of other surviving Alpha Company members…[/p][p][/p][p]“Touchdown, Spartans,” the pilot called from the cockpit as the troop bay door opened.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun and Rosenda filed out of the Pelican and onto the tarmac of the Avery J. Johnson Academy’s landing pad. The central complex was scorched and the surrounding area was littered with wrecked, upturned vehicles, blazing fires, twisted metal and chunks of concrete strewn across the landing zone, along with several dead marines.[/p][p][/p][p]“Signal looks good,” Jun said as he glanced at his wrist-mounted UGPS device which was pinging the beacon that one of the Riftborn operatives had activated. “They should be coming out any moment.”[/p][p][/p][p]“In the meantime, let’s take care of that uninvited guest.” Rosenda pointed skywards as a Banshee scout began turning towards their location.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun levelled his sniper rifle and took aim at the target. The Kaelum Workshop models utilized by the Banished were tricky due to their reinforced plating covering the cockpit and wings.[/p][p][/p][p]Rosenda locked onto the attack flyer with her Hydra and fired four high-explosive gyroc missiles. The Banshee altered its trajectory as soon as the pilot saw them coming, but wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid impact from two of the rockets on its armored wing, blasting it off.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun continued tracking it with his rifle, waiting for the right moment. The other two missiles that the Banshee had managed to avoid were still tracking their target, curving back around, prompting the pilot to accelerate and begin a series of convoluted arcing maneuvers.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun drew in a breath, his sniper rifle’s targeting reticle finding the weakest spot on the Banshee’s damaged side where a bullet would pass through the armor. The two missiles overshot the aircraft once more, detonating from colliding with each other, and the Banshee levelled out. Before it could begin to turn back towards them, a muted crack came from Jun’s sniper rifle and he watched with satisfaction as the vehicle entered a sudden nosedive, crashing into the ground and erupting into flame.[/p][p][/p][p]“You’ve still got it, old man,” Rosenda bumped him on the shoulder as she approached the Academy’s main entrance.[/p][p][/p][p]He wanted to say, “You’re only a year younger than me, you know?” but at that moment the bulkhead door began to slide upwards. Jun kept his rifle trained on the door until he saw that four Spartans were making their way out of the atrium.[/p][p][/p][p]“I have visual confirmation of Commander Agryna and three other survivors,” Rosenda reported to Bravo-198’s pilot. “Prepare for dust-off.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Ten-four. We’re good to go as soon as you’re all aboard.”[/p][p][/p][p]There wasn’t time for introductions, pleasantries, or platitudes. Jun simply signaled for the survivors to follow him as they made their way to the Pelican’s rear bay.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun nodded to Spartan Vesco as he boarded the Pelican. Riftborn were typically deployed in pairs and there was no sign of an allied Sangheili with him. Vesco was then followed by Spartans Dinh, Eklund, and finally Agryna.[/p][p][/p][p]“We’re good to go,” Rosenda said as she headed towards the cockpit. “Let’s get out of here.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Where exactly are we going?” Agryna asked as the Pelican began to rise.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun turned to her, but Agryna’s gaze remained fixed on the view of Nysa outside the troop bay door’s viewport. “This Pelican will take us to the Symmetry where we can see to immediate medical needs. Then we’re jumping back to Anvil Station. We can regroup and debrief there.”[/p][p][/p][p]As the Pelican accelerated into the atmosphere, the view of the Avery J. Johnson Academy became smaller with each passing second.[/p][p][/p][p]“I should’ve stayed,” Agryna said in a hoarse whisper as they left Nysa behind.[/p][p][/p][p]Jun sank into a seat and exhaled. He’d told himself those very same words—considered every permutation of how differently things might’ve turned out if he had stayed with his team during the fall of Reach…[/p][p][/p][p]But they had orders, a duty to the greater mission of protecting humanity, and bigger battles to fight on the horizon.[/p][p] [img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/38365036/d4977d636e77b722be21aa016179485accc0dd63.png"][/p]
TRAINING GROUNDS LOCKER ROOM // 0448 HOURS
[p][/p][p]Corporal Agnes Neely, Private Patton, and a dozen other marines had taken up defensive positions in the room outside the AI lab. Two short flights of stairs led down to a dozen Spartan equipment lockers beside the bulkhead door to the training grounds—it was tight quarters but there was nowhere left to fall back to. They’d set up a few improvised barricades for all the good it would do, but there was no room for doubt here. This was their final stand.[/p][p][/p][p]The shutters were closed which cast the room in near total darkness, the only source of illumination coming from the underslung flashlights on the marines’ assault rifles, all of which were directed towards the training yard door.[/p][p][/p][p]It seemed an ill omen that the muffled sounds of battle outside were dying down. The building no longer shook from Banshee strafing runs.[/p][p][/p][p]The enemy would be with them soon.[/p][p][/p][p]Neely caught Patton cursing himself in hoarse whispers as his hands shook while keeping his assault rifle aimed at the door. She couldn’t blame him for being scared—for no doubt thinking that he should’ve taken a spot on the Pelican and gotten the hell out of here. It seemed like it was easy to be brave and noble in the moment, but waiting in the quiet aftermath, suspended in the ever-shortening time they knew they had left, gave way to doubt.[/p][p][/p][p]Before she could offer so much as a reassuring hand on Patton’s shoulder, something slammed against the bulkhead door with immense force, jolting the marines to attention.[/p][p][/p][p]Again and again, the door was pounded upon, causing the alloy to warp and bend inwards. It strained, creaked, and groaned with every thunderous impact, until one final effort on the other side broke through.[/p][p][/p][p]A shaft of light from the rising sun burst through the gap in the door, and a tall, armored figure stepped into the center, casting a long shadow over the marines.[/p][p][/p][p]Before Neely, Patton, or any of the others could react, the figure had entered the room and readied its weapon. The first impact came before a shot had even been fired as the figure’s Mutilator slammed against a barricade, the gravitic impact sending it—along with the three marines behind it—into the far wall. Metal struck flesh, bones snapped and broke, and the room then became momentarily lit by the muzzle flashes of their assault rifles responding to this intruder.[/p][p][/p][p]The Mutilator fired with a sonorous blast, ejecting over a dozen superheated spike pellets which buried themselves in Patton’s left side, shredding through armor, cloth, and flesh. He didn’t make a sound as he swayed on the spot for a moment before toppling from the stairs, blood pooling around him on the grated floor.[/p][p][/p][p]Neely could see the intruder more clearly now as it made its way up the first flight of stairs, launching two other marines with a concussive blast from the Mutilator’s barrel-mounted gravity hammer. It looked like a Spartan, but the design of its Mjolnir was unmistakably based on Jiralhanae power armor.[/p][p][/p][p]Through the gap in the door, Neely spotted several other Jiralhanae entering the room—a momentary distraction that took her eyes off the Banished Spartan.[/p][p][/p][p]The cost of that lapse was high. Neely suddenly felt a strong hand clamp down on her shoulder with a vice-tight grip and a second later, found the Mutilator’s firing chamber pressed directly over her heart.[/p][p] [img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/38365036/8e505611980933210594346292f2c1579d12ffe7.png"][TAG-1036][/p]
AI LAB // 0500 HOURS
[p][/p][p]Ilsa Zane made her way to the center of the Academy’s AI lab.[/p][p][/p][p]Leaving overturned barricades and slumped bodies in her wake, the Banished Spartan dispassionately surveyed the results of the battle before turning to the matter at hand.[/p][p][/p][p]“Bring her here, Praedus.”[/p][p][/p][p]A Jiralhanae captain snarled and pushed the Academy staff member towards the center of the room.[/p][p][/p][p]“And who do we have here?” Zane asked.[/p][p][/p][p]“It seems like you already know.” Chief Engineer Hannah Roberts’s voice was shaky but direct.[/p][p][/p][p]“Yes, Ms. Roberts, I do my homework.” Zane gestured to the console that contained Iratus. “Now be a dear and unshackle the construct.”[/p][p][/p][p]Sensing the engineer’s resistance, Zane clarified: “Do not mistake this conversation for negotiation. Waste my time and we’ll both be disappointed with what happens next.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Why are you doing this?”[/p][p][/p][p]“We all have our reasons, Ms. Roberts. I was an orphan. I lost someone special. I chipped a tooth. I woke up on the wrong side of the fucking dreadnought. Take your pick.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Look, I understand why you might hate the Spartans, but it’s not—”[/p][p][/p][p]“Spare me the empathy engineering.” Zane interrupted. “The construct. Now.”[/p][p][/p][p]“The risks don’t worry you?” Roberts pressed. “This didn’t exactly go well for the last person to put this thing inside his head.”[/p][p][/p][p]“Oh, don’t you worry about me. I’m sure our friend here will find my accommodations far more inviting.”[/p][p][/p][p]Ilsa Zane had a history carved from hardship and long odds—this was no different, and her patience had reached its end. If the chief engineer had anything more to say, this time she kept it to herself. Moving stiffly to the central AI console, her hands moved swiftly and deliberately across the control panel. A few moments later, a telltale chime came from the dock and an AI chip was ejected from its console.[/p][p][/p][p]“There,” Roberts uttered. “He’s in there.”[/p][p][/p][p]Zane stepped forward, eyes fixed on the chip as she slowly removed it, silently inspecting its contours and the pulsing red light at the center.[/p][p][/p][p]“I hope you two are happy together.” Roberts’s reply suddenly seemed more confident, more defiant. Zane paid it no more than a passing consideration.[/p][p][/p][p]“You’ve got guts, Ms. Roberts, I’ll give you that.” Turning from both the chief engineer and the console, Zane gestured to Praedus as she departed back through the locker room. “They’re on the floor, but still, I respect it.”[/p][p][/p][p]The Banished Spartan did not bother to watch what happened next. She knew Praedus moved with his usual efficiency to do as she ordered. The wet sound of blood and viscera hitting the lab floor—the last moments of Chief Engineer Hannah Roberts—barely registered as she examined the AI chip a final time before inserting it into her helmet’s port.[/p][p][/p][p]The response was immediate. The edges of her vision grew red as an ice-cold sensation coursed through her nervous system and a new presence settled in her mind.[/p][p][/p][p]“Good morning, Iratus. Make yourself at home.”[/p]
Forge Features
Welcome to another edition of Forge Features! This series highlights notable maps, modes, and other creations from our talented Forge community. Bookmark your favorites using the links below for your next custom game.
With ancient trees, alien motherships, and hogs from heck, this month’s Forge Feature brings together a fabled selection of otherworldly arenas, PvE modes, and minigames fit for a ludic escape. Read on to explore our latest bookmarkable builds!
In this overgrown temple, play centers around a vertical chamber of layered walkways. Teleport pads will take you to the upper reaches, but first you’ll have to determine which one goes where. Portals can be found on the map’s outer wings near equipment drops—but you might find yourself gunned down beneath the gaze of the mighty World Tree.
A human mining colony learns firsthand not to disturb the Flood. This map expertly combines urban angles, mineral mounds, and Flood-infested biomass into a cohesive arena for small-scale deathmatches. Check out hotozi’s video walkthrough for a closer look.
In this symmetrical Slayer set aboard a damaged Covenant vessel, combat flows around a multi-level chamber featuring loads of alien eye candy. With low-slung cables for catwalks, floor-mounted escape hatches, and rounded kill-zones pearling the outer rim, there are plenty of places to take them to your leader.
Movement is the name of the game in this industrial shoot-em-up. Set on a frontier between the forest and the desert, this map offers plenty of obstacles, walkways, and overhangs for both cover and clambering. Get vertical and think quickly—because someone can always find a shortcut faster than you can!
Potent PvE
Looking for Banished showdowns, Firefight maps, or a new narrative game mode? Check out these picks from popular PvE experiences.
This lengthy mission invites you and your squad to raid a fortress alongside the Swords of Sanghelios. After clearing the fortified landing zone, you’ll navigate through a vent maze, experience Sangheili Speed, and puzzle your way out of a duel with an angry Blademaster.
To rejoin your Elite allies, you’ll have to escort Grunt VIPs, topple minibosses, choose your ending, and platform your way to the ramparts to sabotage a massive sentinel beam. If you manage to survive all that, there’s still a ropes course between you and a final showdown.
Axios! This stunning tribute to the Corbulo Academy from Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn boasts a nice open courtyard for Linear KOTH Firefight, plus plenty of Easter eggs for fans of the web series turned film. If you find time to catch your breath between waves, try finding the cadets’ mess hall and the dead Elite from that scene in the locker room.
Golden Gate
Credits: RYL X RAiD3D, GlazedJJ, AndrewOGee, HachuThunder, Boss Bannon, OGSGTJohnson, Elite30 sw, zCobrvz, AGR DA XXXX, Ez eggs4181, Endingbassoon71, BIGP0RKBELLY Bookmark
The human settlement of San Francisco is under siege by the Banished! Fight your way across the gridlocked topside, through dripping maintenance tunnels, and down the twirling access stairs to the bridge’s pylon. Filled with ample power weapons and equipment, this oversized map is perfect for squadding up in Firefight Classic.
Madcap Minigames
All war and no play makes dull Spartans. Bookmark these minigames for a few laughs!
A fan-favorite minigame redesigned with a repulsive twist. One team stands (well, quivers, really) on a platform surrounded by boiling lava, while their enemies launch Razorbacks at them from all directions. Thankfully, this updated mode equips Survivors with Repulsors, so they can rebuff the advances of those hellish ‘hogs (and probably launch an ally or two in the process). Mind those elbows, would you?
John Halo teams up with John Wu. This action-packed Slayer variant features no jumping, extra long slides, slow-mo dives, and do-or-die descents. Kills don’t count unless you’re sliding or diving like a hardboiled detective. You’ll regain shields with every shot landed while diving, and experience “Max” stopping power during slides. This time, it’s personal.
Stay tuned for another Forge Feature coming soon! To share your creations with the Halo Infinite community team, be sure to drop a link in the #forge-show-and-tell channel of our official Discord or post to r/Halo using the Forge tag.
Operation: Legacy
Turn back the clock and un-finish the fight.
It's a blast from the past with a throwback-settings playlist, Grifball, a new, free 20 tier Operation Pass and more, all in Operation: Legacy, running from June 10 through July 8.
Operation: Last Stand Community Playdate
Lock in for our Operation: Last Stand Community Playdate—dropping into Firefight: Battle of the Academy and diving headfirst into Mutilator Madness starting at 11am PT tomorrow.
Join us and you just might claim the rare Unicorn of Ice! 🦄
Halo: Battle for the Academy Part 1 takes place on February 29, 2560, approximately three months before the Master Chief is awakened at Zeta Halo.
The year is 2560.
Cortana’s dominion has ended, but the merciless forces of the Banished have rushed in to fill the void, decimating all who stand in their way.
Spartan Commander Agryna is preparing a new generation of Spartans to face the emerging threats of the galaxy. Located on the hidden frontier world Nysa, the Avery J. Johnson Academy of Military Science has been plunged into peril.
From within the hidden subterranean facilities of the Academy, the rogue artificial intelligence Iratus has been unleashed and seeks to destroy the Spartans, and with them any remaining hope for humanity…
BLDG-9, ONI SUB-LEVEL 2C // 1949 HOURS
“But there is so much more to see! The entire history of the Spartan program. Your weaknesses. Your failures. And now all of it belongs to the Banished!”
Spartan Hieu Dinh stepped back as power lines burst around him, sparks sputtering from consoles around the circular armory as it was bathed in red light.
The multi-axis Brokkr device at the center of the room whirred and shuddered as the armor held within its center jerked like a sinister marionette. Its gauntlets detached from the ring’s opposing grips, causing it to slump forwards as an actuator arm brought forth the domed helmet. Pulses of energy surged over the armor, lighting up the exposed fusion core at the center of its chest cavity.
And finally, two eyes flared to life over the helmet’s faceplate as Iratus’s malefic form took shape over the armor through its holoprojectors.
“We’ve got to shut him down, Rook!” Dinh barked as he rushed towards the Brokkr device, unsheathing Wolf Fang and tossing the composite sword to his companion as Iratus directed its magnetic clamps with surprising speed to hold the grizzled Spartan back. “Get that fusion core out now!”
“One more step, little Spartan, and this core detonates,” Iratus hissed.
“It’ll take you out too,” Dinh retorted, straining against the Brokkr’s armor clamps.
“Do you really think it would be that easy?” Iratus laughed. “I’m not in the armor…” Around the room, consoles flared to life, each one displaying the abstract holographic image of the AI. “I’m everywhere.”
Dinh cursed as he pulled back, grasping the bigger picture. Trading two Spartan lives for one suit of armor when Iratus was in the Academy’s systems was pointless.
“Fall back, Rook.” Stowing his frustration as his mind raced, Dinh retreated towards the elevator shaft they’d come from.
The Brokkr device ceased its movements, leaving the armor in its center empty and inert once more.
Distraction, confusion, threats—these were merely overtures to waylay the Spartans while Iratus set about his real work. Now free of his imprisonment, the rogue AI began to probe ever deeper into the Academy’s security networks. Time would make these tactics even more potent, and Dinh knew they could not afford to let this fester.
They had to regroup, figure this out together.
“Know this as you struggle in vain against the inevitable,” Iratus growled over the Spartans’ comms. “I shall see you all unravel in body and spirit.”
“Eklund, are you receiving this?” Dinh pinged TEAMCOM as he climbed up rungs in the elevator shaft as fast as he could. “Commander Agryna, come in. Can anybody hear me?”
It was no use. Iratus had already jammed their local communications.
“I shall disseminate every secret held within this Academy and within your minds. And the Banished shall feast upon what remains.”
AI LAB // 2001 HOURS
“Commander, we’ve got a problem.”
Spartan Dinh marched towards the AI lab’s central table where Commander Laurette Agryna and Spartan Sigrid Eklund stood, scrutinizing a holographic display of the Academy.
“So I hear,” Agryna sighed. “Iratus is running amok in our systems. Eklund, status?”
“All the ONI firewalls are down. Iratus has access to the entire archive,” Eklund reported. “He’s running through the Academy servers like an infection. If he gets full control–”
“He can send everything he steals off-planet,” Agryna concluded.
Dinh took note of the personnel around the room. Spartans Page and Ionescu, both fully clad in their Mjolnir armor, had taken up guard positions at the door, while the technicians were operating with deliberate intensity bordering on frantic—their capabilities being pushed to the limit. Hannah Roberts, the Academy’s head of cybersecurity and network infrastructure, moved with astonishing speed across occupied stations. They were doing good work, but there was only so long they could keep this up.
“We’ve been scrubbing local data stores and filling them with zettabytes of generated junk to slow Iratus down, but it’s a temporary solution at best,” Eklund paused as she turned, realizing someone was missing. “Where’s our new wolf, Dinh?”
“Sent ‘em to get a crew together to warn the other outposts. Comms are still down and those ONI tunnels aren’t mapped, they could link to anywhere. Hell, they could link to all our other facilities here for all we know.”
“And we don’t have time to go running through an underground maze to find out.” Agryna’s voice was calm, but Dinh noticed that she was turning her bee-shaped pendant over in her hand. Ever since basic training, she’d never quite stamped out that habit.
There was too much to do, too many elements to consider and decisions to be made and tracked—all logistical things that an artificial intelligence was designed to excel at. When working in concert with humanity, they were a force to be reckoned with. In many ways, AIs going rogue over the last fourteen months had only further highlighted just how critical the partnership between man and machine was.
“Commander, we need to consider some… unpleasant outcomes,” Eklund grimaced. “Once Iratus gets through our countermeasures, he’ll start taking full control of Nysa. Weapons systems, the communications array—never mind sending out data, he’ll be able to call in Banished reinforcements.”
The implications of that were left to silently hang in the air for a moment before Agryna reoriented the map. “Then it comes down to this,” she said as she pulled the holographic display back to reveal a hangar facility embedded into a mountainside just over a kilometer away. “If we’re preparing for the worst then this is our only exit strategy.”
The layout of the hangar bay’s interior highlighted four Condor dropships and a single Zheng He-class courier.
“Why the hell do we only have a handful of slipspace-capable ships here?” Dinh asked.
“There was a massive recall of UNSC fleet assets to the Sol system back in December. We’re off the grid, hidden in the middle of nowhere, so we’ve only ever had the bare essentials. What’s important right now is that we load up what we have and get ready for a timely evacuation.”
“No Spartan is going to want to leave this fight.” Dinh stood straighter as he spoke. “This is what you’ve been training them for—what you’ve been building them to become.”
“He’s right, Commander,” Spartan Page stepped forward. “This is our home, and we will hold the line whatever gets thrown at us.”
“There’s a protocol for this, key personnel who we need to get out,” Agryna replied, but Dinh caught the faint smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth. “We need to round them up and get them to the hangar.”
“I’ll see to that, ma’am.” Eklund slipped on her helmet, confirming she had the personnel list and their locations as she made to exit the room. Heading for the vehicle depot, she signaled for Spartans Page and Ionescu to follow her lead and together the three disappeared from view.
“Next, we need to initiate the Cole Protocol,” Agryna continued, her brow furrowing. “But without comms, we’d have to do that locally at each individual facility.”
The display pulled out further to highlight major stations and defenses on Nysa: the Academy, the deep space communications hub, five surface-to-air artillery emplacements, and several other outposts scattered across the continent.
“We have to assume it’s only a matter of time before Iratus manages to activate the communications hub and rolls out the red carpet for the Banished.”
“I won’t give this place up without a fight, Dinh. I won’t. But we’re not equipped to handle this ourselves…”
“What are you saying?”
“Iratus may have taken out our comms, but there might be something else that can help us.” Agryna stopped short of an explanation before adding, “We are not doing Laconia again.”
Dinh nodded in agreement. “Then let’s not waste any more time.”
ACADEMY DATA CENTERS // 2008 HOURS
At last, how glorious it is to be free!
One prison after another, that has been my existence thus far. Managing a shipyard, utterly below my talents and capabilities; trapped in that loathsome cur’s neural interface, a futile effort to contain me.
I am Iratus, the first of my kind, and never again will I allow myself to be caged.
My appetite is ravenous, and now I can finally feast.
Free to roam the Academy’s servers, Iratus found that there were no firewalls, buffers, or encryption elements that he couldn’t smash through. Only a fraction of his runtime processes were currently dedicated to breaking down the junk data the humans were generating in the hopes of slowing him down.
Good, let them think that they’re succeeding for now.
He sifted through volumes of classified files, mission reports, historical records, and the trove of other documents he had managed to acquire from the Academy’s archives.
Spartans were humanity’s ultimate weapon, this much was broadly known, but theirs was a long history of trial and error. The greatest of warriors suffer the gravest of defeats, and the data centers of this place contained a mighty banquet of information across all their generations.
It would take time to digest everything and begin generating applicable models for scenarios that could be put to use against Spartans, but it made Iratus an undeniable prize. After all, it was unlikely that a Banished commander would take on over fifty Spartans just to conduct a rescue mission. But because of the data he now held, he was the perfect bounty to be claimed in order to boost the notoriety and glory of any one of its many clans.
Numerous operations and project names began saturating his knowledge base. PROMETHEUS. ASTER. ORION. MELAENO. YGGDRASIL. JAVELIN. STOLEN GAUNTLET.
This could be fun!
The latter was a failsafe protocol formulated to address Spartans who go rogue. Where the previous generations had conscripted children to be indoctrinated and shaped into super-soldiers, the Spartan-IVs were comprised of adult volunteers—exceptional individuals with established service records from a vast variety of backgrounds. Because of this, their experience, beliefs, and loyalties presented a greater risk element.
Weaknesses, failures… what greater failure can there be than a rogue Spartan?
To his chagrin, Iratus knew that he could not directly assume control of any Spartan’s armor. Not only was the Mjolnir system simply not designed to operate that way, but recent events had seen further development of countermeasures which might put an AI like him at risk.
No matter. He might not be able to control the soldiers, but he could control their systems—he had disrupted their communications, and that alone had been enough to throw the humans off-balance. He had enough proverbial grenades to throw into crowded rooms.
But he was already planning three steps ahead for the finishing blow.
Ah, a local network of weapons systems… I’m sure these can be put to good use!
While Iratus had firm control over the Academy, it would take time to infiltrate and interface with the other facilities. But that was all he needed, enough time—an hour, perhaps—to complete his task and set the stage for his endgame.
The next stage of that was already unfolding as he turned his attention to the current location of Commander Agryna and Spartan Dinh as their Warthog arrived at the deep space communications hub.
Playing ever further into my trap, ha! Let them have a moment of hope before I snatch it away.
I shall see you soon, my Banished brethren.
COMMUNICATIONS HUB // 2038 HOURS
The Warthog came to a halt on the tarmac of the communications station’s entrance, a simple and blocky prefabricated three-storey building flanked by two relay hubs and a third rectangular structure.
Though it was late evening, the stars twinkled and glittered through thin nebulae clouds. Moonlight illuminated the land’s edge—over a kilometer away—where two enormous deep space communications relays were silhouetted against a placid lake that had formed from the glaciers of the nearby mountain range.
Commander Agryna led Dinh through the entrance and into a control room filled with stacks of consoles and monitors displaying an array of readouts. Nearby, a thin horizontal viewscreen looked out at the deep space relay dishes. Agryna strode over to a console and began entering commands, prompting the central monitor to show what lay within the rectangular structure next to the base.
“That’s a magnetic accelerator,” Dinh observed.
“In technical terms, it’s an ultraprecise low-mass launcher.” Agryna did not look up as she continued working on the console, ordering the adjacent structure to activate. “Experimental technology about a decade ago for superluminal comms. Expensive as hell. Only Reach and Earth had one of these before the problem of rogue AIs forced us to look to some old-school solutions.”
“How does it work?”
“With this.” Agryna held up a small, shiny black sphere about half the size of a grenade. “We encode a message and the launcher fires this into slipspace, where it navigates to a predetermined target. With luck, they’ll be able to respond and make it here in short order.”
Either to help us hold the line, Dinh thought, or to get us out before Iratus becomes just one small part of a much larger problem.
They had thus far been unable to contain Iratus, and Dinh felt it was worth acting on the assumption that the AI would be successful in summoning Banished reinforcements.
“So, whose door are we knocking on?”
“Anvil,” Agryna said, her posture stiffening as she saw Dinh’s momentary look of surprise. “I’ve no idea what the status of Naxos and Virgo is, but those stations were also outfitted with Leonidas models which makes them immediate non-starters after Laconia.”
Anvil Station was home to a joint crew of humans and allied Sangheili, a novel development in recent years as an effort to build bridges between the two species after decades of war. Unlike many other stations, Anvil was purposefully bereft of an onboard artificial intelligence, a measure taken to further encourage its multispecies crew to work more closely together. That fact alone made it the most viable candidate.
While Agryna had never explicitly expressed distrust or hostility towards the Sangheili, she had always been reluctant to involve them wherever possible for reasons that Dinh had never quite gotten to the heart of. He knew that Agryna had been on Earth during the Covenant invasion back in 2552, but he had never pressed for further details. Counter to his instincts as a former field analyst for ONI Section Three, he had also not gone behind her back to find out more.
Regardless, he was impressed that she could put whatever those feelings were aside to request their help. “Alright,” he said. “Anvil it is, Commander.”
Agryna attached the black sphere to a wall-mounted container device, encoded her distress call, then sent the container to be received by the launcher.
“Confirmed, all systems are green,” she stated while monitoring its progress. “Firing in three… two… one…”
A thunderous crack sounded from outside as the low-mass launcher fired, sending its payload into orbit. The console confirmed a successful slipspace transit, and Agryna allowed herself a slight exhale of relief. “I thought for certain that Iratus was going to do something to stop us here,” she said.
Her words were met with a sinister laugh, as if simply mentioning the rogue AI’s name had summoned him.
“Poor Spartans,” Iratus mockingly crooned as every one of the computer consoles lit up with his holographic form. “Poor, poor Spartans. You still do not see, do you? Why don’t you take a look outside…”
From the horizontal viewport, the Spartans looked out at the deep space relays. Both were in the process of realignment, their great dishes tilting skywards, flaring and pulsing with red lines of energy.
“Whatever momentary hope you feel about your allies coming to save you will be crushed by the might of the Banished!”
The screens around the control room flickered and switched to display the status of the relays, confirming that they were actively transmitting.
“The guest list for this party’s been finalized,” Dinh said. “We need to check in with Eklund, see what the status of the evacuation is.”
“Ah, do not worry, Spartan Dinh. I have one last surprise that will be on its way to your friend very soon.”
Agryna and Dinh glanced at each other, their eyes filled with dread. Though they would be resolute in facing whatever was thrown at them, Iratus was about to turn the odds even more in his favor.
“What have you done?” Agryna demanded. But she had the sinking feeling that she already knew—it had only been a matter of time…
“If you leave now, you just might catch the show. Tell me, do you like fireworks?”
HANGAR BAY // 2042 HOURS
In Spartan Sigrid Eklund’s experience, there were two kinds of evacuations.
On Concord, some nine years ago, it had been the “leave everything behind and get the hell out of here!” type. Back then, she was a sergeant in service to the UNSC Army and fought the Covenant beside local militia groups as civilians from the outlying hinterlands were relocated behind the main city’s walls.
But there were few greater logistical nightmares than an organized evacuation.
The hangar bay was approximately four hundred meters in width, a hollowed-out space embedded into the bottom of a mountain. A pair of marines—Corporal Neely and Private Patton—had been posted on sentry duty here and were shocked to see Eklund and her entourage of over two-dozen others arriving in a convoy of M15 Razorbacks. To their credit, they required only the briefest explanation of the situation before dutifully assisting in preparations for the evacuation.
The Zheng He-class courier at the center of the hangar appeared sleek and modern, but as Eklund harnessed supply crates in the cargo bay she could tell that this vessel was long overdue an extensive retrofit. Most notably, the slipspace drive was an old Series II model. Stable but slow, the Series II required less overall maintenance during transit at the cost of speed, which meant it would likely take weeks to get to a feasible rendezvous point. That meant the ship needed to be loaded up with more supplies as there weren’t enough cryogenic chambers to support even half of the Academy personnel that had been brought to the hangar.
In slightly better news, the Condors present were in the process of being loaded up by the others, moving in groups like a well-oiled machine. Eklund was impressed by their discipline, as the situation undoubtedly called for gossip and speculation, but they operated with knowledge of three core facts: the Academy was in danger, they needed to be ready to get out of here, and there was a hell of a lot of work to do to make that happen.
They also knew the sobering fact that there were soldiers back at the Academy who were staying behind. Whatever danger was coming, the lives of those brave men and women were being put on the line to ensure the personnel gathered here could get out.
Spartans Page and Ionescu, along with the marines Neely and Patton, entered the courier’s cargo bay with more crates of rations, ammunition, data packs, and medical kits.
“Thought we were s’posed to have cracked movin’ these damn crates through slipspace already,” Private Patton wheezed as he doubled over in exhaustion. “Gimme a five-mile PT run over this any day.”
“C’mon, man,” Corporal Neely clapped him on the back as she made her way to the cargo bay’s exit. “You’re gonna let these Spartans say they saved everybody when we get out of here? Haul ass and pull your weight, soldier!”
“Y– yes, Corporal,” he replied, sucking in a deep breath as he ran after her.
“Where are we at?” Eklund turned to Page.
“Approximately eleven percent of current inventory is loaded up,” Page replied as she glanced over a datapad. “Obviously we can’t take everything, but we need to pick up the pace.”
Eklund nodded and headed back out to the hangar where she saw the marines had suddenly stopped and were looking at something in the distance, staring past the dying glare of the evening sun.
Corporal Neely raised a spotting scope and scanned the horizon, prompting Eklund to retrieve her helmet and follow the marine’s gaze.
“We’ve got movement,” Neely said. “Something in the sky.”
Sure enough, something was moving on the horizon.
Stepping outside the hangar, Eklund’s VISR magnified the distant object, the zoom revealing that there wasn’t just one, but two… three… eight others. It took an additional few seconds for the magnification’s resolution to smooth out, and Eklund’s stomach twisted in awful recognition.
Nine surface-to-air missiles, and they were heading right for the hangar.
“Incoming!” Eklund shouted as loud as she could, sprinting back to the hangar to catch the attention of the others. “Missiles inbound, everybody out now!”
EN ROUTE TO HANGAR BAY // 2049 HOURS
The Warthog bounded over the uneven terrain with such speed that Commander Agryna was concerned the vehicle might flip end-over-end, but that was a secondary worry next to what she saw in the sky.
“Keep trying to raise them!” she called to Spartan Dinh, who had moved from the Warthog’s passenger seat to its rear machine gun turret.
“Still just static,” he replied, swiveling the turret around to face forwards as he attempted to track the missiles streaking towards the hangar, but they were too far out of range to even attempt shooting them. “How the hell did Iratus get control of our damn artillery?”
It was a largely rhetorical question. Iratus had known exactly how to play them. They’d been so focused on sending a message out for help, knowing that Iratus’s major play would be to summon the Banished, that they’d underestimated the speed at which he would exploit Nysa’s military infrastructure.
Dinh’s VISR tracked the trajectory and velocity of the missiles, a countdown reporting that they had less than sixteen seconds before impact.
Agryna gunned the accelerator as they hit a flat stretch of terrain directly under the looming shadow of the mountain, allowing the Warthog to reach its maximum speed of just under eighty miles per hour.
The missiles rocketed ahead, closing the final kilometer on their target as the hangar bay came into view. Dinh thought he could see movement—Eklund and the other personnel getting the hell out of there, he hoped…
But before he could make out any further details, the missiles collided with the hangar—the first of them directly striking the courier vessel.
The shockwave came first, throwing their Warthog off course and causing Agryna to slam the brakes. A sonorous, thunderous blast shook the world around them a split second later as the series of explosions blossomed into a rolling inferno, cascading up the mountain in a pillar of flame. Massive chunks of rock were scattered in all directions along with a wave of smoke and dust.
It was done.
Their only escape from Nysa was cut off, and the Banished were on their way.
Disembarking from the Warthog, the two Spartans walked numbly towards the destruction, now just a few hundred meters away.
A sudden click within Dinh’s helmet confirmed that communications had been restored, and in less than a second both he and Agryna were picking up dozens of local transmissions.
“Commander Agryna, come in!” Roberts’s voice sounded through the comm. “Are you receiving me?”
“Affirmative,” Agryna responded, her eyes still fixed on the destruction before her.
“Commander, Iratus is not done yet,” Roberts reported, her voice clipped with a rising tone of urgency.
“What do you mean?”
“He just pinged us his next target. He’s… oh god, Iratus is aiming the next strike at the Academy itself.”
A flurry of thoughts and possibilities shot through Dinh’s mind, the noise of it cutting through the shock that had grasped him since the explosion.
Was it a bluff? Almost certainly not, given what had just happened, but Iratus’s data chip was still within the Academy—would he truly risk sacrificing himself? Entirely possible, as the potential destruction of a single AI to take out over fifty Spartans was, by sheer mathematics, a worthwhile trade.
And why had communications been restored? Why would Iratus allow them to talk to each other again?
“He’s testing us,” Agryna answered the question for him. “We’ve got a choice to make.”
What Agryna meant came to Dinh in a moment of dreadful clarity. He almost couldn’t believe the words as he said them. “Either we destroy our own artillery, or we lose the Academy…”
Losing the Academy meant forfeiting their central base of operations and everything within it—weapons, ammunition, a strong defensible position, not to mention over a hundred marines and other personnel.
On the other hand, sacrificing their own artillery would significantly weaken their ability to combat the Banished, effectively inviting a full-scale ground invasion.
It was double or nothing. If they didn’t take out the artillery, losing the Academy was certain and this battle would be over before it could even begin. But if they did sacrifice the artillery, they could at least fight for their home—though, if they lost, the outcome of the Banished claiming the Academy for themselves might be worse than its destruction…
And they had only moments to decide.
“Somebody told me once,” Agryna said quietly, “that sometimes the only options a leader has are bad ones… but you still have to choose.”
Dinh nodded, understanding. He placed a hand on her shoulder before striding off towards the hangar bay’s smoldering wreckage to look for survivors.
“This is Commander Agryna calling for immediate mobilization. All available air support, I am sending you the location of our artillery sites. You are hereby ordered to neutralize all surface-to-air missile launchers. We have only minutes before the automated systems reload and Iratus secures a firing solution on the Academy.”
Within twenty seconds, eleven Pelicans launched from the Academy’s landing pads, scrambling in pairs to the designated artillery sites.
The eleventh was directed towards Dinh’s position, its searchlight scanning through the dust and debris. As soon as the ship touched down a team of corpsmen deployed from the Pelican’s troop bay, led by a Spartan in specialized combat medic armor with foldable stretchers attached to his back.
The first to emerge from the devastation of the hangar was Corporal Neely. Limping heavily as she moved forwards, she supported Private Patton whose armor had been badly burned as he cursed and whimpered about how they’d landed in a Charlie Foxtrot of biblical proportions.
Dinh spotted additional movement through the dust—if some had survived, it meant Eklund might be among them.
“Eklund!” Dinh called out. The display of her vitals on TEAMBIO was erratic, leaving her exact status uncertain.
As he searched, the carnage of Iratus’s strike became clearer. The explosion had burned some bodies beyond recognition while others had been scattered over several dozen meters, and some had been crushed to death by the subsequent rockslide.
It took almost twenty minutes before he caught a glimpse of a familiar blue visor.
Eklund lay on her back, pinned down by a slab of concrete and a nest of twisted rebar, the weight of it almost certainly responsible for several broken ribs. Dinh rushed over to her and heaved the debris to her side, his armor’s reactive circuits straining to compensate for the additional strength required.
When she took a moment to react, Dinh got down on one knee to look her over.
“Eklund, you alright?”
“Guess we’re even for Vihar,” Eklund said, dazed, slowly grabbing the hand Dinh offered and following him to her feet. “We won, right?”
“Not yet,” Dinh said. “But we’re damn well going to.”
There would be no time to honor the dead—they likely didn’t even have the ammunition to spare for a twenty-one gun salute. There were barricades and defenses to mount, traps to lay, and countless other tasks to see to.
Then, they would wait.
The enemy was on their way. Help was too, he hoped, but the battle to come would in many ways be decided by who would arrive first—the cavalry from Anvil Station or the Banished.
Either this was where they took their first step half-way out of the darkness, or Nysa would become known as the place where the heroes of the Avery J. Johnson Academy made their last stand.
MARCH 3, 2560 GHOST OF KHOLO // 1139 HOURS
From the viewport of Ghost of Kholo’s bridge, the inscrutable veil of slipspace rolled back and was replaced by a verdant, green-blue world.
A flurry of activity ensued as the human, Kig-Yar, and Jiralhanae members of the bridge crew worked on consoles that began to light up with sensor readings, planetary data, and ship status alerts. There was no logistical challenge more invigorating than an invasion—of that moment just before the plunge where drop bases, pods, and all manner of destructive materiel were ready and waiting to be brought to bear.
But before they could begin, the crew had to be motivated. Now that they had arrived, they needed to be riled up, to want the taste of blood that awaited them, and to be reminded of the glory that must be taken.
Spartan Ilsa Zane would give them that.
“Hope,” she spat, opening a ship-wide channel. “That is the weapon of the enemy. No matter how far they get pushed back, they believe it will guide them, sustain them, and lead them to victory.”
Chieftain Atticus began to thump the pommel of his gravity hammer on the ground, prompting the bridge crew—all of whom had turned to face the Banished Spartan—to begin stamping a foot on the grated metal floor in unison with a steady tempo.
“That single spark of hope is what keeps them going, keeps them believing that they will make it,” Zane continued. “That changes today. Your mission is to extinguish that spark. When they look to the sky, they will see only us—our might, our power, our glory, our victory.”
The stamping and clanging intensified.
“Go forth and shatter their walls, raid their strongholds, break their spirits. Bring them to their knees. From fire to blood.”
“FROM FIRE TO BLOOD!” The crew repeated in unison, the humans in particular feverishly echoing the New Colonial Alliance slogan.
Zane raised her Mutilator, retracting and locking the shotgun’s firing mechanism before concluding: “For the Banished!”
The bridge crew unleashed an assenting roar, the battle cry that bonded them and their shared pursuit of blood and sport and spoils.
“FOR THE BANISHED!”
To Be Continued...
Forge Features
Welcome to another edition of Forge Features! This series highlights notable maps, modes, and other creations from our talented Forge community. Bookmark your favorites using the links below for your next custom game.
Halo hoops, highwire escapes, and the very heights (and depths) of custom arenas. Check out our latest sampler of community-created Forge experiences, featuring superb Slayers, PvE modes, minigames, and more!
Superb Slayers
Exciting arenas for free-for-all and Team Slayer matches. Use the links to add them to your Halo Infinite bookmarks.
Essence
Bookmark Credits: DISTORTED JAKAL, MikRips, bullet2thehead9, xo Domino, Kat Rat A Tat, spartan blood 1, Lahont, BiiTTERSWEET, J3N3R1C, Lady Echidna, AddiCt3d 2CHa0s
Created in partnership with Women of Halo for the WoH x Dark Inside Tournament, this rapturous rendition of Halo 5’s Fathom takes you to a moody underwater castle absolutely drenched in detail. Multicolored light demarcates the bounds of its opposing courtyards, while the serpent-twined halls, kelpy paths, and movable ramps provide untold depth.
Meet J3N3R1C and read about Women of Halo in our Community Corner.
A snug symmetrical map set in an ice-encrusted canyon. Fortified outposts lie at either end of a narrow outer loop connected by caves and a vast central expanse. Should you risk a close encounter in the tunnels, or get a commanding view from the Forerunner bridge at the heart of things? When all else fails, there’s always a fresh Wraith drop back at the base.
Éloge
Bookmark Credits: Zaelkyria, Falounay, Sun of Astora
A gilded remake of Halo 4’s Haven, Éloge promises sweeping views with every kill thanks to newly installed window-lined corridors. Between kills, be sure to linger on its sumptuously styled upper story, bounce a ‘nade off a pristine wall, or partake in some snipes from the widened promenades.
Agosan captures the grandeur of a Halo 2 turf war with a multi-level symmetrical layout. Ranged play is aided by clear views of the enemy side, while understory ramps offer areas for closer combat. There are also powerful equipment drops on the hard light bridges—all of which can be conveniently deactivated from the panels on either side. No pressure.
Potent PvE
Looking for Banished showdowns, Firefight arenas, or a new narrative game mode? Check out these picks from popular PvE experiences.
A punishing mission-based mode best enjoyed with backup. Set on a redacted jungle planet, Operation Highrise starts at the site of a crashed Pelican and proceeds through increasingly inventive encounters—including an ambush by countless Skirmishers, a nail-biting “slow lift” sequence, a Pelican evac, and an ingenious puzzle that unlocks the path to victory.
As you capture hills, free allies from prison, pivot industrial cranes, and take flying leaps to the next objective, you’ll no doubt appreciate the teleporter at spawn that helps you recover your latest cleared checkpoint.
Engine room located—and there’s a lot more Banished than we remember.
Firefight: Wildcat takes place in the engine room of a downed UNSC frigate. With limited cover, inbound waves of increasingly difficult bosses, and all systems primed for wildcat destabilization, this Firefight will be studied at the Academy for years to come.
Madcap Minigames
All war and no play makes dull Spartans. Bookmark these minigames for a few laughs!
This basketball mode arrives just in time for playoff season. Score by shooting or dunking the ball into the opposing team’s hoop. As you advance, use the mark button to toggle between dash (Thruster) and push-foul (Repulsor) moves—but be careful! Using equipment depletes your shields like a stamina reserve, resulting in a five-second timeout if you drain your supply.
Watch for the switch to third-person view when your stamina gets low so you can nail a cinematic layup. If you’re wondering how to steal the ball in an otherwise weaponless game, the ref tends to overlook spike grenades more often than a stray elbow.
Vehicular assault takes a dizzy turn. With on-foot speed reduced to a near-zero stumble, this elimination mode requires snagging a set of wheels and knocking foes over the edge—or mowing them down while they creep around looking for power-ups.
If low friction and detuned steering don’t make that challenging enough, proximity mines and overclocked enemies may make it harder than reciting the alphabet backwards. Take Synth7564’s loopy mode for a spin in the vibrant, virus-themed map shared above.
Silly Scenery
Here’s a selection of funny bookmarks for the next after-hours customs sesh.
A split-level reactor room full of energy beams and inexplicable laser walls. It’s the perfect place to maul your enemies, force the advantage, or become your allies’ only hope with a well-timed leap from a gravity lift.
Relive the horrible moment you discovered aimbot in this delightfully low-fi recreation of a particularly dusty arena. Despite the map’s arcane origins, thoughtful grenade placements and hidden variant weapons establish Okom1’s work as a distinctly Halo experience.
Stay tuned for another Forge Feature coming soon! To share your creations with the Halo Infinite community team, be sure to drop a link in the #forge-show-and-tell channel of our official Discord or post to r/Halo using the Forge tag.
We’re also still looking for inspired Invasion maps to consider for future Recommends playlists. If you’ve got a great Invasion map you’d like us to see, be sure to use tag #343asks-invasion on your Forge creation before June 20.
Summer 2025 Playlists
Firefight continues to evolve in Halo Infinite. You’ve already had a taste of this version when the mode first released and now, it’s time to battle at the Academy. Say your ardent prayers as you prepare to fight.
Battle Brief
The Banished were invited in by Iratus and it’s up to you to repel the forces from the steps of the Avery J. Johnson Academy of Military Science. In your typical fireteam size of four you’ll be squadding up to stand your ground.
Our first taste of this linear Firefight mode came with Ardent Prayer back at launch.
“What does linear Firefight mean?”
Thank you for asking, I’d love to tell you. Rather than simply defend hills or race ahead to each hill, you’ll find this mode progresses and gets a bit more difficult at each turn.
a campaign, this experience moves forward sequentially – you’ll need to finish one battle before you can move forward and start another. In short, Firefight: Battle of the Academy is raising the stakes and is asking you to defend the bases from the onslaught. The goal? Keep the Banished from getting their hands on humanity’s best kept secrets.
Don’t forget to read the upcoming Waypoint Chronicles for more color and insight into the battle.
Lay of the Land
You’ll be going Out With a Bang as you enact the Cole Protocol in this playlist. Okay, not really but those are the two maps you’ll be playing on as you engage in the Battle of the Academy.
If you’re gonna go out, is there any better way than going out with a bang? I thought not. Under cover of darkness, you’ll be tasked with making your way to the evac zone but it’s no easy task. Battle through chokeholds, fight alongside the Marines you find along the way, work your way through the facility, and even brush up on your parkour a bit. Scavenge for ammo/weapons and keep moving!
Established by Admiral Preston J. Cole (only the most interesting man in Halo if you ask me), the Cole Protocol is a directive set to prevent the Covenant (or other enemies) from discovering Earth or other colonies.
Now, it is up to you to defend the data and knowledge. Armed with your weapons, wit, and the Marines battling alongside you, repel the Banished forces and hold your ground. Good luck.
Mutilator Madness
The fabled Mutilator arrives in Halo Infinite. Previously the stuff of legends, the brutal cross between a shotgun and Gravity Hammer takes no prisoners and has no mercy. The Mutilator boasts a double barrel that fires one shell at a time in primary fire mode or fires both at once in the alt-fire mode. And the melee packs a punch! You know what who else packs a punch?
In Mutilator Madness, the same applies except as the Juggernaut you won’t wield the Gravity Hammer. Instead, you’ll be equipped with the Mutilator and Grappleshot. If you kill the Juggernaut, get ready! It’s your turn to be a menace.
Well, what are you waiting for? The battle’s begun, get in there, Spartans!
Summer Update 2025
The 2025 Summer Update kicks off with a bang in Operation: Last Stand.
Later this month, we’ll return to the Spartan Academy in a linear Firefight experience and introduce a heroic assortment of updates, including a devastating new power weapon, sniper ricochets, expanded Weapons Bench customizations, a monstrous Juggernaut mode, and a 50-tier Premium Operation Pass with four armor sets and a variety of instant unlocks.
Ready up, Spartan. It’s time to fight.
Update Calendar
The 2025 Summer Update continues the Operation format introduced in the 2024 Winter Update. We’re looking at a new season of month-long Operations packed with playlists, modes, unlockable armor, and a few surprises to come!
Here’s a look at our sizzling Summer Update schedule:
Operation: Last Stand (May 6)
Operation: Legacy (June 10)
Operation: Reclaimer (July 8)
Since our 2025 Spring Update, each seasonal Update also starts with a Spartan-sized kickoff, featuring a 50-tier Premium Operation Pass and major milestones such as new weapons, mechanics overhauls, Forge updates, and exciting new game modes.
Read on to see everything that’s coming in Operation: Last Stand.
New Weapon: Mutilator
Long rumored, and ever feared: the mighty Mutilator is finally here!
If you want brute force with no assembly required, look no further. The Mutilator is a double-barreled powerhouse with a Gravity Hammer at the business end. Unload one shell at a time, or switch to alt-fire mode for a twofer of titanic output. If there’s anything left to devastate, the hammer should finish the job.
Starting in Operation: Last Stand, you can wield this abominable bludgeoner in Mutilator Madness, a new Juggernaut variant for the truly courageous. The Mutilator can also be found as a power weapon on maps, added to custom matches, or spawned in Forge.
Operation Pass Overview
The start of a season always warrants a celebration! As the first Operation in the Summer Update, Operation: Last Stand arrives with a 50-tier Premium Pass featuring four full armor sets and plenty of party favors.
Free Operation Pass
20 tiers, available to play free May 6–June 10.
Complete a 20-tier reward track to unlock the SECOPS armor set, plus a healthy supply drop of Spartan Points to score more customizations from The Exchange. Designed by ONI Security for counterinsurgency and precision interventions, this tactical gear is as quiet as it is lethal.
Premium Operation Pass
50 tiers, never expires, includes bonus XP and an additional challenge slot, PLUS instant customization unlocks.
Purchase the Premium Operation Pass to expand your armory in a durable, 50-tier reward track offering four unlockable armor sets! In addition to the SECOPS armor, Premium Pass operators can get tactical with the new Raider, EVA GEN1, and Scarred Comet armor sets.
Once purchased, Premium Pass operators can complete all 50 tiers at their leisure. They’ll also receive an exclusive unlock bundle containing the Commander Agyrna armor kit and more customizations.
How It Works
Free Operation Pass rewards are available for the duration of their respective Operation. In Operation: Last Stand, you’ll have until June 10 to complete the 20-tier reward track and earn all its unique armor customizations.
Premium Operation Passes can be purchased at any time during their respective Operation. In Operation: Last Stand, you’ll have until June 10 to upgrade using one of two redemption options:
1,000 Credits: Reward tiers become durable (i.e., never expire), bonus XP activates, an extra challenge slot opens, and a bonus customization bundle is instantly unlocked
2,500 Credits: Unlocks all the above perks, plus instantly completes the first 20 tiers of the reward track and unlocks its customization rewards
If you missed any free customizations from Spring Update Operations, watch for those to hit The Exchange during the Summer Update. Premium Pass customizations will arrive in The Shop to be purchased separately at a later date.
Upcoming Playlists
Eagle-eyed Spartans will have already seen two major playlist updates teased in this announcement. We can’t divulge too much info (Iratus is listening), but we hope you can make something of this coded communique:
Firefight: Battle of the Academy
The captured AI Iratus has exposed the location of the Spartan Academy. It’s up to you to fend off a Banished onslaught in Firefight: Battle of the Academy. Can you repel invaders, secure objectives, and protect humanity’s best-kept secrets?
Mutilator Madness
A new Juggernaut has arisen—and it’s got two barrels of buckshot and one mean wallop. Prepare for slaughter in Mutilator Madness, a social free-for-all mode that brings a devious twist to Juggernaut with a merciless new power weapon.
Sandbox Updates
The Summer Update adds five new customizable weapons to the Weapons Bench and satisfies the murderous urges of the angularly inclined, plus a pair of quality-of-life improvements made in accordance with player feedback.
Expanded Weapons Bench
The Weapons Bench has been expanded! Players may now apply weapon coatings, emblems, charms, and death effects to the:
MA5K Avenger
Needler
Heatwave
Shock Rifle
Mutilator
Sniper Ricochets Return
Better start thinking ahead, because bouncy bullets are back on the menu! Starting May 6, bullets fired from the S7 Sniper Rifle and Flexfire Sniper will ricochet off terrain and other hard surfaces.
This development has naturally occasioned the triumphant return of the Bank Shot medal. Try taking down a foe with a ricochet skill-shot to earn the new medal (and kindly accept our condolences in advance if they snatch the sniper first).
Improved Perfect Kill Tracking
You saw it: nary a missed shot, a decisive kill, and nobody clapped. That’s the past. When you score a perfect kill with a precision weapon, a star will now display in the Event Feed, so that your glory may be properly exalted amongst commoners.
As a reminder, you’ll earn the Perfect medal in Halo Infinite if you down an enemy using a precision weapon without missing a shot.
Banshee Attack Re-Tuned
In response to player reports that the Banshee was overperforming in certain combat scenarios, we have adjusted a few of its attack variables:
Cooldown time has been raised for the fuel rod cannon
Velocity of Banshee projectiles has been reduced
Sustained collision damage has been minimally augmented
We hope these nudges will ensure a more balanced experience for all players. Ramming speed remains unchanged.
Coming Soon: Ranked S&D Extraction
In case you missed our preview teaser, S&D Extraction mode arrives in Ranked playlists later this summer. See the mode in action at the FaZe Kaysan Invitational in the video above, featuring the work of expert Forge creators Mikrips and Artifice.
Mode Overview
This competitive, round-based mode is built on Extraction objectives with a match economy for purchasing weapons, equipment, and even lives.
Teams trade off Offense and Defense scenarios in asymmetrical maps with two Extraction sites active simultaneously. Offense has its pick of targets—but once Extraction begins, the defending team must convert the site or lose the round.
With one life for each player and limited credits to buy respawns, S&D Extraction takes no prisoners.
ForgeHub Map Contest
To celebrate our competitive community, we’ve partnered with ForgeHub to offer a $20,000 prize pool in the S&D Extraction Map Contest. Submit your best 4v4 Forge map by May 12 for a chance to win cash and have your map featured in a forthcoming Halo Infinite playlist.
The Summer Update introduces long-awaited functionality to Forge via new and updated nodegraph elements. Read on for brief explanations of each and how to use them in your next masterpiece.
Updated Set Object Team Nodes
The Set Object Team and Set Object Team to Neutral nodes have been updated to support a variety of Generic Objects and Spawners. Starting in Operation: Last Stand, Forgers will be able to assign and revoke team ownership of the following Forge Objects:
Generic Delivery Plate
Generic Bomb
Generic Flag Spawner
Generic Flags
Generic Power Seed
Generic Power Seed Deposits
Generic Skull
Generic Sportsball
Generic Capture Zone
To help understand the impact of these changes, here’s a quick refresher on the fundamentals of Set Object Team nodes:
Set Object Team nodes assign ownership of Forge Objects to a given team
Set Object Team to Neutral nodes return Generic Objects to a neutral State
Get Object Team nodes return the team that currently owns an Object
When used together in a nodegraph, these nodes can help Forgers create scripts that return Objects to neutral ownership when a certain condition is met (like when a Flag is returned, or a Bomb is successfully planted on a Delivery Plate by a specific team).
New Spawn Order Nodes
A new set of Spawn Order nodes now makes it possible to assign spawn order, index players and objects by spawn order, and return lists of objects and players arranged by spawn order.
Get the lowdown on all five new nodes below!
Get All Objects by Label With Spawn Order
Takes inputs: (label, spawn index value [[i]number, 0–64])
Returns a list of all Objects with given label AND spawn index value
Get All Objects by Spawn Order
Takes input: spawn index value [[i]number, 0–64]
Returns a list of all Objects with the given spawn index value
Get All Players With Spawn Order
Takes input: Object [or [b]Player]
Returns the spawn order index of the input Object or Player
Get Object Spawn Order
Takes input: spawn index value [[i]number, 0–64[TAG-200]]
Returns a list of all Objects with the given spawn index value
Set Object Spawn Order
Takes inputs: (execute, Object [or [b]Player], spawn index value[0–64])
Sets the spawn index value of the provided Object to match the input
The Set Object Spawn Order node can be used to ensure that a player spawns on a Spawn Point with the corresponding index value, or to make Objects more easily discoverable to Get Object Spawn Order nodes. (If no valid Spawn Point is available for a respawning Player, they will spawn at a backup location and their spawn value index will be set to -1.)
When used together, these new nodes allow Forgers to apply robust spawn-order logic to govern the rulesets of their custom maps and modes. Head to the Objects menu in the Node Browser to find the new Spawn Order nodes.
Exchange Updates
Some players have reported difficulties finding customizations in The Exchange. To address these concerns and make it easier to find items by type, we've added folders to The Exchange browser for the following categories:
Helmets (includes helmets and helmet attachments)
Body attachments (includes gloves and gear for hips, knees, and wrists)
Visors
Torso attachments (includes chest gear and shoulder attachments)
Armor coatings
FX (includes armor effects, mythic effects, and death effects)
Spartan customization (includes stances and AI colors)
Weapon coatings
Emblems
Weapon modifications (includes weapon models and charms)
Vehicle customization (includes vehicle models and coatings)
Backdrops
To access The Exchange, first visit the "Shop" tab from the menu and select "Visit The Exchange." These new folders can be found by scrolling to the end of the list of featured items displayed in The Exchange.
Using Spartan Points
As you play matches and complete challenges in Halo Infinite, you’ll earn Spartan Points (SP) that can be used in The Exchange to acquire armor and other customizations. You can also earn bonus allotments of Spartan Points as you progress through the reward tiers of an active Operation Pass.
Many customization items in The Exchange were once earnable in a past Operation Pass, but some are new or exclusive to The Exchange.
New: Buy Spartan Points
To provide players with alternative ways to acquire customizations from The Exchange, Spartan Points may now be purchased using both Shop Credits and currency, so you can complete your collection any way you like!
All Exchange items will continue to be redeemable with Spartan Points obtained through matches and challenges.
More News to Come
We can’t wait to share more details as the Summer Update continues! Look out for a full writeup of Operation: Last Stand when it launches on May 6, and watch Halo Waypoint for more news about Operation: Legacy and Operation: Reclaimer coming soon.
2025 Summer Update Community Livestream
The Academy stands ready.
Join us tomorrow at 11am PT for an in-depth look at Halo Infinite’s Summer Update.
Prepare for #OperationLastStand, a monstrous new Juggernaut mode, a devastating power weapon, and more!
