Headhunters (short story)

For the team of the same name, see Headhunters (Team). Headhunters is a short story in Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe, a collection of short stories by a number of authors. It tells the story of a specialist team of SPARTAN-IIIs, mainly Roland and Jonah, two top echelon elite SPARTAN-IIIs who are selected by ONI for a special branch under the Beta-5 Division. Headhunters is written by Jonathan Goff.

Story Synopsis
The story focuses on the ghost-like Spartan-IIIs codenamed "Headhunters" in their top secret missions, and also shows a contrast between the openly celebrated SPARTAN-IIs and the highly-classified unknown secretive force of SPARTAN-IIIs in that only ONI Section Three operatives know of their glories and failures. The characters and their close bond is revealed throughout the story, with entertaining and engaging dialogue between the central characters.

The Headhunters are a top-secret group of unique IIIs that were "a secret even to their peers" sent on top secret missions. Individuals had to survive two or more specially assigned training missions to be evaluated in the additional, grueling training regimen (seven months of supervised field exercises, followed by six months real-world wartime insertions). At the program's height there was a maximum contingent of six squads - six teams, with a total of seventeen soldiers rotating in to fill gaps when half or all of a team was lost in the field. Fireteams are comprised of two headhunters, initially paired via exhaustive interviews and ONI profiling. Jonah and Roland have excellent compatibility with 97.36 percent - only one other pair scored higher.

The story continues with an explanation of the gear Roland and Jonah have, and then finally the story begins as they stealthily recon, infiltrate, and rig a Covenant digging site on a remote planet. Roland and Jonah sneak past a perched Kig-Yar sniper, and into the outskirts of the camp, using VISR mode to help navigate and to look out for av-cam Elites. After gathering intel for 2 days, they make way. Roland, with an experimental active camouflage (av-cam) module on his armor, will be rigging the reactors in the base to blow while Jonah begins to hunt and kill Covenant in the camp. Other new equipment featured in the story comes in the form of an "energy disruptor," a device that disables the Covenant's plasma weapons and energy shields (those of personal armor systems as well as force-field doors in the camp). Jonah uses one of his several disruptors to attack and confront a group of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites.

After Roland has set the chargers using his av-cam, he meets Jonah on the other side of the camp as Jonah is about to battle his enemies. Together they defeat the enemies. Jonah disables the last Elite with two debilitating shots to the Elite's kneecaps. With the enemy disabled, Jonah confronts the Elite about the Covenant, about the glassing, about why they fight. Jonah thinks of his family - killed by the Covenant (The Spartan-IIIs were all orphaned by the Covenant). Jonah finally kills the Elite.

Despite the duo being among the best of the best they are surprise attacked by Elites, and Roland is stabbed and killed. The Elite is revealed to be wearing a never before encountered type of armor, and Jonah is surrounded by several other similarly-clad Elites. He is attacked and injured, and finally releases the trigger for the explosives, and the camp is destroyed.