The Spartan-IIs’ first combat mission was not against the Covenant. It was an operation against the very enemy they had been created to fight: human Insurrectionists. Operation TALON sent John-117, Kelly-087, Sam-034, Fred-104, and Linda-058 to infiltrate the rebel stronghold of Eridanus Secundus and capture Colonel Robert Watts. This episode examines the newly augmented Spartans operating before Mjolnir armor had made them recognizable symbols of humanity’s Covenant War. The mission required disguise, infiltration, rapid violence, and extraction rather than a conventional assault, demonstrating exactly why ONI had invested in a tiny force capable of reaching targets protected from ordinary military power. Blue Team captured Watts and returned with remarkably limited losses. From ONI’s perspective, the program had proven itself. Yet by the time the mission occurred, news of the Covenant attack on Harvest had already begun changing the strategic situation. The supersoldiers designed to prevent human civil war were about to face an enemy no one had imagined when they were created.
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